


Your Blood Is My Drug

by Lozz



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Child Eren Yeager, Eventual Levi/Eren Yeager, F/M, Levi is an ass, M/M, Slight Levi/Petra, The Survey Corps are vampire hunters, Vampire Eren Yeager, Vampire Hunters, Vampire hunter Levi, Violence, lots of blood, slight Eruri maybe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:49:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3814501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lozz/pseuds/Lozz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The kid, no older than six, had chestnut brown hair, light tan skin, and the most stunning teal colored eyes. God, he had to be the most beautiful child I've ever seen.</p><p>The boy glanced down at the floor, staring at what he assumed to be his mother's blood. Then he stared at my hand, which was also covered in blood. His eyes briefly flashed red, which confirmed my suspicion about him being a vampire. Only vampire children were that flawless like dolls. But what was confusing was that he wasn't pale or lifeless, he had some human features to him. Vampires don't have human features.</p><p>Whatever the hell was going on, I was screwed.</p><p>With this pretty eyed kid asking me where his mother was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Guilty

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I'm glad you liked the summary so far so without further ado here is the first chapter of the story~ I love the Eren/Levi shipping and I noticed there weren't too many child Eren fics so that's how I got the idea for this story. Plus some vampire inspiration ;) Now of course since Eren is a child their relationship won't get romantic until way later on until he's older. Maybe in the second series if I decide to make this story a trilogy or something. But for now he will stay a cute little kid :) Comments are highly appreciated, thanks~

"Damn it,"

I clicked my tongue in annoyance as I glanced up at the empty bottle of suppressants sitting inside of my medicine cabinet in the kitchen. I should've noticed before they were getting low and tell Hanji to get me some more.

I picked up the empty bottle only to toss it aside in the trash. 

Suppressants are what pretty much kept me sane through out the day, well at least human for that matter. That's all I cared about.

Ever since I got bitten by one of those filthy blood suckers I've been having to take suppressants nearly every day in order to keep me from going through blood withdrawals and turning completely into one of them. Hanji and some other scientists created suppressants at the lab designed to specifically help people stay human for those who were bitten by a vampire.

It's been at least two years now since I got bit. A part of my past that I prefer not to get into details with because besides going through that shitty ordeal I also had to watch two of my childhood friends; one of whom I basically raised, get torn apart and sucked dry by those monsters. I made sure I killed every last one of the bastards, and after that I was pretty much stuck with serving the Survey Corps. Just another fancy name for the group that hunts vampires down. 

Until I die, I won't rest until every one of those vamps are dead at my feet with stakes impaled through their hearts.

The loud buzzing of my phone interrupted me from my previous dark thoughts. As it buzzed away on the kitchen counter I reached out for it to check who was calling me at this late hour. Once I saw the caller ID as Hanji's, I had an irresistible urge to groan out loud. Feeling more irritated than before, I angrily furrowed my eyebrows as I picked up the phone and answered.

An obnoxious loud screech of my name through the other side of the line made me immediately regret picking up the phone. Yet, I always still do. Sometimes I question why I even stay around with these dumb fucks called friends.

"What do you want." I gave a simple cold reply.

"Leeeeviiii! You actually answered your phone this time! I'm so proud of you! My mean little munchkin is opening up more!" She responded from the other line, and I could swear I heard her sniffling through tears of joy.

Literally feeling my eyes slowly roll over to the back of my head, I sighed and for a second I almost wished she was here talking with me face to face so she can see how my boot looks when I shoved it up her ass.

"I'm fucking hanging up."

She gave out a loud cackle from the other line before muttering something to someone else about drinks I couldn't quite hear since there seemed to be loud music and people talking wherever she was. 

"Your so funny, Levi. Noo but what I really wanted to call you for was to ask if you wanted to go out with us. We're at one of the clubs right now." She asked once she came back to the phone.

"We...as in who."

"Just me, Erwin, Mike, Nanaba. You know, the other captains." 

"If you can get me a fake ID," I smugly replied. 

Seeing as I was only eighteen and the rest of the captains were obviously over twenty one already, the lucky bastards. It was irritating to be the youngest captain, not to mention the shortest. However, people know not to make short jokes with me if they want to keep their heads intact with their bodies.

"Oh that's right, I forgot! Psh, like you need one anyways, you'll probably scare the shit out of the bouncers to let you in like last time," She snickered.

"True," I leaned against the kitchen counter and slightly smirked. "I'm gonna pass anyways. I need more of those suppressants and I don't suppose you have any with you right now."

"No I don't," She gasped in response. "You can get more at the local pharmacy though, they always sell them."

"Yeah, I'll go there."

"Okay, well have fun! I'll bug you some more tomorrow! Have a good night Leeeeviii!" She practically yelled, sending me kisses through the phone. 

I instinctively pulled the phone away from my ear in disgust. "Whatever, shit glasses." I replied, which earned a chuckle from her as we hung up on each other. That was always my way of saying goodbye.

Once we hung up, I slipped my phone in my pocket before throwing on one of my nearby jackets since it was always dark and freezing at night. I opened the front door and left the comfort of my apartment to head outside. 

I walked passed my car in the parking lot, assuming I would just walk to the pharmacy since it was just across the street from the apartment complex. I carefully crossed the empty street and made my way to the other side of the sidewalk. I kept my gaze fixed in front of me, seeing a homeless man writhing on the floor next to his dirty blanket.

As I neared closer I could hear his raspy breathing and showing symptoms of a typical person who has been deprived of suppressants. I instinctively raised my arm and pulled the hoodie to my jacket down over my face once I started to pass by him.

He briefly glanced up at me and slowly crawled towards me to slowly reach his hand out. I merely stepped out of the way so he couldn't touch me and he remained laying on the concrete as I walked on by. 

The city was a lot like this at night. It really showed the effects of vampires roaming around and killing humans. Nobody in their right mind would go out walking at night alone but I wasn't concerned with it too much since I had enough training and experience with killing both vampires and thugs.

Once I turned the corner to get to the pharmacy, I was surprised to see practically a hoard of people standing right outside, angrily banging against the window and shouting row of curses at the pharmacy doctor who was currently now closing the blinds down and flipping the open sign to closed. 

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I muttered.

The doctor appeared from the other open window, probably staying inside because he didn't want to get tackled by the angry mob outside. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience this might cause you, but we have ran out of suppressants for today. Please come back tomorrow morning, we'll be sure to restock until then." 

I looked around the crowd at the mortified faces of some people and realized that some of them won't be able to last until tomorrow. They continued to hurl rocks at the windows just as the pharmacist closed down the blinds of the last window.

I sighed and cursed under my breath, seeing as I would have to wait until tomorrow to pick up suppressants. Tonight was definitely going to be shitty for me.

As I turned around to leave, some other people from the mob accidentally pressed against me from so much shoving and trying to get to the windows. One man practically knocked right into me, and I responded by immediately throwing him down to the floor. He hit the floor with a thud and stared up at me in shock. 

"Watch it, pig." I sneered, giving him one of my irritated glares before walking off back to the apartment complex.

I walked back across the sidewalk, huddling into my jacket from the cold and seeing my breath through the icy air. I scoffed and pulled out one of my cigarettes from the pack and slipped it in my mouth so it dangled from my lips as I reached down for the lighter. Once I pulled the lighter up to the cigarette, it reached for the clicker and tried to click it on but my trembling hands kept fumbling and missing.

"Shit," I grumbled, cursing the cold.

I finally clicked it on and pressed the fire against the butt of the cigarette, before putting the lighter away back inside my pocket and taking in a deep inhale of the smoke. I blew out a puff of smoke as I walked passed each of the alley entry ways.

I heard loud horrified screams from one of the alleys I passed by so I slowly came to a halt and casually enjoyed my cigarette as I debated whether or not to interfere. Normally I wouldn't have even stopped, crime is very common at night around these parts, especially from a vampire. Taking a few steps back, I stopped in front of the alleyway where the screams were coming from. There was a man pressed against the wall by another man, no vampire, by the way he was brutally biting at his neck and sucking all his blood dry.

Once he let go of his victim, he slowly crumpled to the ground with dead cold eyes. The remaining blood he had left slowly seeped out of his body and surrounded him in a pool of blood. The vampire growled and looked right up at me, his black iris covering his entire eyeball. Which was indicating that he had been deprived from blood for a long time, meaning he was possibly on suppressants and had ran out of some a few days ago. Suppressants definitely weren't something that came cheap, so a lot of the poor and homeless would be screwed if they got bit. Which meant more work for the vampire hunters.

I gave out a bored sigh as the vampire continued to growl at me like some animal. I pulled out my special handgun, making sure it was loaded with bullets first before switching the safety switch off. Just as I was about to raise the gun, the vampire must have noticed the hunter insignia on the side of the gun and got scared shitless because he was now running off like lightning towards the other end of the alley. I quickly gave a pull of the trigger as soon as the vampire whirled at the corner of the other end. The bullet must have hit him somewhere because he gave out a loud hiss once I sent it flying.

I muttered a curse and made my way towards the other end of the alley where he ran off to. I peered down at the floor and saw several small spots of blood on the ground but it was nothing that he couldn't heal on his own. 

I started to follow the small trail of blood leading to a construction site of some sort with several trees and rocks around. When the blood suddenly disappeared, I continued to wander straight ahead. The area was incredible dark and eerie, like any place really. I glanced around at my surroundings as I kept the gun cautiously raised. When everything continued to remain silent, I slowly latched the gun back to the pocket holder and figured he must have gotten away.

Deciding to head back to the apartment complex once I was wondering why the hell was I trying to look for some vampire alone at night in this god damned freezing weather, I briefly turned around in front of some rocks and immediately was tackled to the ground once I did.

My head hit the ground, leaving me dazed as I tried to fix my gaze on the bastard who was attacking me. To my surprise, it was some young woman around her early twenties I assumed, only a couple years older than I was. She was rather beautiful, but that was the last thing on my mind as she screamed gibberish at me. Seeing as that I was still incoherent from being dazed, I couldn't hear a fucking word that was coming out of her mouth.

I briefly reached for my gun as she started hitting me and attacking me. I couldn't tell if she was a vampire or if she was just insane.

"Get off me, bitch." I breathed out once my senses started to come to.

That didn't exactly help since she continued to smack me around. "Stay away from my child! Stay away from him!" She cried out.

I furrowed my eyebrows at her, confused. "What the hell are you talking about," I stared into her brown eyes and olive skin, realizing now she was completely human. Nevertheless, I harshly shoved her off me because I hated being touched, let alone attacked. Once I did, she staggered backwards and tripped over some stones behind her. She fell back onto the ground and smacked her head on another rock in the process. 

I quickly stood up and ran over to her unconscious form, slowly lifting her head up in my arms and watching the blood fall from her head and inside her ears. Her long eyelashes caressed her cheeks which were now going lifeless pale and losing the bit of color they had before. I merely cradled her body in my arms and tried to shake her awake, shocked that I had actually managed to accidentally kill her. 

"Shit, shit, shit." I moved the hair out of her face and continued to shake her. "Come on damn it, wake up. Fuck, I didn't mean it."

I placed her body back on the floor and stepped away from it, angrily kicking at a small pebble and pinching the bridge of my nose. I had really fucked up this time. Plus the commander was going to have my head if he ever found out I had killed a human by accident. 

What had she said to me? Something about her child?

I glanced around the area, seeing nothing other than darkness besides us. I didn't see any child around. Maybe she really was insane.

I walked passed her body and left it there, seeing as that I couldn't do anything else besides leave. I moved on ahead towards the rocks to see if I might find anything else from either her or the other vampire. As her blood dripped from my hands and down to the rocks, I cursed under my breath, feeling furious with myself.

Great fucking job, Levi. You just killed a human girl.

As I was going to continue on ahead, I briefly heard small footsteps behind me. Thinking it could be anyone at this point, I whirled around and kept my hand near the gun pocket ready in case I had to use it. 

My gaze was immediately met with a small child, a little boy no older than six.

I tensed down and kept my hand lowered against my side, seeing as it was no threat. I carefully examined the boy, realizing he had the same features at the woman from earlier. Chestnut brown hair, light tan skin, except for the fact the little boy had stunning teal colored eyes instead of brown. God, he had to be the most beautiful child I ever seen. Which had me wondering a bit...

The boy glanced down at the floor, staring at what he assumed to be his mother's blood. Then he stared at my hand, which was also covered in blood. His eyes briefly flashed red, which confirmed my suspicious about him being a vampire. Only vampire children were that flawless like dolls. But what was confusing was that he wasn't pale or lifeless, he had some human features to him. And if his mother was human, he can't be a vampire.

What the hell was going on?

The boy slowly began to walk towards me, causing me to instinctively step back. Child or not, he was still a vampire.

"Is that...my momma's blood?" He solemnly asked.

My blood instantly went cold. I had no idea how to respond to that, let alone how to deal with children. What could I possibly say? Yeah kid, I killed your mother. 

"Is she coming back.? I'm really hungry..." The child replied, staggering for a bit but then regaining composure. His irises were starting to darken, indicating that he hasn't had any blood for days, maybe weeks.

I knew nothing about vampire children with their drinking habits, all that vampire research shit was what Hanji liked doing. For once I actually wished she was here right now to help me out with this.

I stared at the little boy, having a mental argument with myself in whether I should kill him or not. Part of me that didn't want to screamed that he was just a child and part of me that did screamed that he was one of those monsters that only lives for human blood.

"No she's not. She's dead."

How sympathetic of me.

The child merely gazed down at the floor with his hair over his eyes so I couldn't quite see his expression. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw one sole tear drop to the floor beside his feet, followed by more tears until this time his face was covered in tears and his shoulders were hunched and trembling. He raised his head and his face contorted into horrified expression before he started to give out agonizing cries and screams of hurt.

I hissed under my breath and ran forward to grab the kid in my arms and cover his mouth with my bloody hand. With us being out in the open like this, anyone could have heard his screams and start coming to this spot. Maybe even his father, if he had one. Then I would have even more blood on my hands.

Once the kid had appeared to stop crying, I looked down at him to see that he had his face calmly nuzzled into my hand. Probably taking in the smell and comfort of his mother's blood that was still on there. 

I watched as his eyes slowly fluttered close as he leaned against my hand. Starting to feel slight sympathy for the boy, I lifted him up into my arms and held him to my chest. He absentmindedly curled up against me and pressed his head where my heartbeat was to hear it. I couldn't tell if that was a method of comfort he was using or if he was just trying to hear the blood flow inside my heart to make him even hungrier. Whichever reason made me uneasy, especially about taking this blood sucker back to my apartment.

I could've just left him here, damn it. 

However, here I was carrying the kid back with me to the apartment complex like some kind of saint. 

Whatever, I would just call Hanji up to come take him in the morning and then I would be free from this guilt.

Free from whatever kind of vampire this kid was.


	2. Thirsty Cirumstances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi finds out first hand what a vampire child is capable of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the kudos and comments, everyone ~ It makes me happy to see them and I'm glad you're enjoying the story so far. Here is an early update, enjoy :)

I glared up at the ceiling as Hanji's phone went straight to voice mail for the third time. Knowing her she was probably wasted off her ass right now.

I ran my fingers through my dark hair before angrily tossing the phone aside on the couch. I could feel my patience slowly thinning as I had to listen to the wailing and crying of a small child buried into the pillows of the couch right beside me.

I could really use Hanji's help right about now, that is if the bitch would actually answer her phone.

"Damn it, shit glasses." I muttered a curse, hanging my head down and tugging my fingers through my hair. My grey gaze slowly averted back to the sobbing child. 

"Oi," I merely called, since I had no idea what the brat's name was.

He wiped away the remaining tears on his face and lifted his head from the couch pillows to stare at me. His eyes were getting darker than before, but besides that were all red and puffy from crying so much. Once he felt my deepening glare on him, he sheepishly moved behind the pillows and quietly sat up in the other corner of the couch.

"Kid, what's your name?" I questioned.

He inhaled through his mouth and gave out a few shaky hiccups as one would do if they had been crying endlessly. "Eren..." He softly replied.

"Well Eren, do me a favor and shut up." 

He went quiet and stunned after hearing the harshness of my words. Hell, even I had to admit that was harsh to say to a young kid but I was too annoyed with everything to care at that moment. That, and I was terrible with kids. I hated them. In my opinion they were all loud shitty brats. Not to mention vampire children, that probably topped the icing on the cake for me.

"You're really mean, mister..." The kid rubbed his eyes, furrowing his eyebrows into a small angry pout.

I frowned, clicking my tongue at the boy as I leaned back against the couch with my leg crossed over the other. "My name's not mister, kid."

"What's your name?"

I remained silent for a few seconds before impassively replying, "Levi."

"Levy?" Eren tilted his head sideways, forming his mouth in a small 'o'. I couldn't help in staring at him, he was just so fucking adorable. 

Did I really just say that.? Disgusting.

"No, not Levy. Lee-vi." I scoffed.

"Levy!" The kid insisted, his previous saddened eyes starting to brighten up. I decided to leave it be, since it was no use in arguing with children anyways.

"Whatever," I sighed in response, reaching for the TV remote and turning on the TV so he could watch some cartoons until morning or sleep if he wanted, frankly I didn't give a shit. All I wanted to do was go crawl in my bed and sleep until morning so the kid would be out of my hands once I called Hanji again.

"Here. Watch some TV," I tossed aside the remote towards him.

He glanced at the remote and then at me with a confused expression on his small face. "But...my mommy said I shouldn't be awake past my bedtime,"

"Well I'm not your mother, kid. So you can do whatever you want," I replied a little harsher than I had intended it to be. I half expected him to start crying again but to my surprise he merely slipped down from the couch to sit on the floor in front of the television screen. He calmly sat there and watched what cartoon was currently on, the show Tom and Jerry.

As I started to walk towards my room I faintly heard him sniffle for a bit, indicating that he had continued to cry again. I stopped at the hallway for a brief moment to hear the sound of his sniffling before brushing it off with a sigh and walking down the hallway to my room. Luckily for me, my apartment was rather big spacial wise. Once I went inside my room, I closed the door shut behind me and fell into my mattress with a tired grunt, closing my eyes and trying to ignore the slight burning in my throat due to the lack of suppressants. I rolled over to my side while trying to get over the previous events that had happened today out of my thoughts. When I had cleared my mind out, my head hit the pillow and sent me into an immediate deep sleep.

But that deep sleep was short lived as I woke up to the sound of someone scratching on the walls in the hallway outside my room. My eyes fluttered open and I peered over to the red numbers on my digital clock sitting on top of one of my drawers. The time read 4:30 a.m.

I gave an annoyed sigh as I rolled over to face the ceiling, resting my arm over my eyes as the scratching got even louder. 

Thank god it was the weekend and I didn't have work until Monday, or that kid would be dead right now. 

I remained laying on my bed for a while longer just listening to the sound of the scratching and deciding that it would stop after a while. When it didn't, I angrily pulled the blankets back and fumbled out of bed to walk towards the door. I turned the door knob and opened the door, which caused the cold breeze of the rest of the apartment to enter my room.

I narrowed my eyes at the dark hallway and turned on the light so I could see better. 

When the lights turned on, there was the kid sitting faced against one of the walls and scratching it with his nails like some sort of haunted child you would see in those cliche horror films. Even by looking at the side of his face I could see dark large eye bags under his eyes, indicating that he had not slept at all throughout the night. 

Maybe I should've put him to sleep instead of making him watch TV, which was still currently turned on in the living room. 

"Oi, what the hell are you doing?" I asked as I continued to watch him scratch on the walls.

He stopped his scratching on the walls and slowly turned his head towards me, his black irises even larger than before. I cursed under my breath and started to take a few steps back. Black veins had appeared around his eyes and his small fangs were now being bared at me to see. He took a few staggered steps towards me, and I could tell he was dizzy from the lack of blood. He slowly raised his chin up, revealing long red marks all the way down his neck probably caused by scratching.

He raised his hands and began to scratch at it again before I had time to protest. "I'm s-so...t-thirsty.." He choked out in heavy raspy breaths.

Every step he took towards me, I instinctively stepped back. All I could see was the need for blood in his eyes, the animal look on his face when he stared up specifically at my neck. "Eren," I carefully warned.

It was only a mere matter of seconds before he lunged out at me and tackled me to the floor with such force I was shocked that it came from a small child like himself. I kept having to remind myself that this wasn't no ordinary kid, he was a damn blood thirsty vampire. And that said vampire was currently gnawing on my neck like it was some piece of meat.

"Shit," I winced, flipping over to try and get him off my neck but the kid wouldn't budge. As we both stumbled into another room I felt his fangs slowly start to sink into my skin. A drop of my blood began to run across my neck as he bit in harder. I felt myself growing more anxious by the second, my breathing getting heavier and my pupils dilating due to the adrenaline and lack of suppressants. I was going to lose it if this little shit kept sucking on my blood. The last time a vampire bit me in the neck was bringing back bad memories that I would rather forget forever.

Feeling desperate, I reached up towards the desk that we landed beside in the room and tried to grab anything that might be of use to get him off since trying to pull him only made it worse. Every time I pulled he would tug on my skin and cause me searing pain. I reached around the desk and managed to grab something metal, what I assumed to be a knife. I clumsily grabbed the handle of the knife and without thinking through it first, plunged it right into the kid's left eye.

He immediately let go of my neck, which was what I wanted, but he ripped some of my skin off in the process and gave out agonizing inhuman screams from the knife currently lodged into his eye. I rolled myself away from him and hissed under my breath as I accidentally brushed along the gaping wound in my neck. I brought a hand up and pressed it against the wound to keep the blood from falling and making the floor even messier than it already was.

Yes, I was thinking about the messy floor right now despite the circumstances we were in. Sue me.

Once Eren pulled away from me, he leaned against the far edge of the wall with a horrified expression on his face as the blood from his eye gushed out and poured along his cheeks. He stopped screaming now but was now sobbing like any normal human being or child would if they were in that much pain. With a shaky hand, he slowly reached up to grab the handle of the knife cutting into his eye.

"Tch," I pulled my hand away from my neck and watched him grab the knife, starting to feel a stabbing pain in my chest from the horrible guilt I was slowly feeling for stabbing a child like that. "Stop, damn it. Don't pull on it, you'll make it worse."

He ignored me since he continued to pull the knife out, screaming in pain and coughing out small amounts of blood as he managed to completely pull it out of his eye. He dropped the knife and it landed on the floor, making a metal clang sound. As soon as the knife hit the floor he scurried out of the room and down the hallway, probably to go hide somewhere no doubt. I don't blame the kid.

I pulled myself to my feet and walked over to the bathroom in my room while holding my pressed hand against the side of my neck. I flicked on the bathroom lights and stared at my ghastly imagine in the mirror. My skin was paler than usual, I was sweating right above my brow, and my eye pupils were increasing in size. After looking at how shitty I looked, I threw some water on my face and took out some bandage patches from the cabinet. While I peeled off the paper and stuck the bandaid patch onto my bruising neck, I heard the sound of my phone buzzing nearby and relief suddenly came over me, figuring it must be Hanji or Erwin calling.

I flicked off the lights and left the bathroom to go retrieve my phone, and once I saw the caller ID as Hanji's, I wasted no time in answering.

"Hey."

"Heyy there! Sorry I missed your calls last night, psh what a wild night! I'm just barely heading home right now," She laughed.

"Your barely just heading home?" I don't even know why I was surprised.

"Yeah, it's only like 5 a.m. right? Woah, it's five already? Damn, whoopsie me." She continued to break into fits of giggles.

I rolled my eyes. "Before you head home, I need you to pick me up some suppressants from the lab. My pharmacy doesn't open up until almost noon, and I don't even know if they'll have any. I need them right now."

"Okay, okay. Hold your short horses, Levi."

"Hanji, I swear to god, if you fucking say that again...-"

She laughed again in response. "I'm sorry, that was a good one, okay I'll stop. Yeah sure my home is passing the lab so I'll get some suppressants and drop them off at your house."

"Alright," I grumbled.

"Alrighty, I should be there in around an hour. See you then, bye darling!"

We both hung up on each other and I placed my phone back down on the bed before falling back on the mattress with a sigh.

~^~^~^~^~^~

I waited around for at least a half hour waiting for Hanji. My throat started getting a burning sensation and I could feel it getting tighter. Not being able to lay around anymore, I went to one of the clothing drawers and got out the best turtleneck like jacket I could find in order to hide the bandage on my neck. Once I found a collared green jacket, I slipped it over myself and lifted up the folds of the collar to hide my neck up. Afterwards I left my apartment building, not too worried about Eren messing anything up in this moment since he was too busy hiding somewhere. Nevertheless, I still closed the door shut behind me and made sure it was locked. The last thing I needed right now was for him to escape and wander around the streets.

I left the apartment complex and stood in front of the parking lot to lean against the wall. I had no idea why I was standing outside, it was fucking freezing. But I was just desperate for my suppressants. As I watched the sun slowly start to rise in the horizon, I pulled out one of my cigarettes again and lit the end of it with my lighter. I inhaled and blew a line of smoke out that was soon hidden by the breeze of the wind.

I faintly heard a meow of a cat beside me, proceeded by a soft nuzzling against my ankles. I glanced down at the floor and watched as the neighbor's cat greeted me. The cat loved me for some reason, maybe because I would always feed it whenever it hanged around in my apartment. It would stay there for hours until the neighbor would come to get it. 

The cat continued to nuzzle me, the name "Patches" on his collar name tag gleaming. The name was terribly original for the cat just because it was black with white spots.

I nudged its face with my foot, trying to push it away. "Go away, I'm not going to pet you right now." I mumbled, irritated. However the cat just continued to persist by meowing in response and wavering his tail up around my ankles as he brushed across.

"Dumb cat,' I sighed and kneeled down to briefly scratch it behind its ears. He happily purred in response. When the headlights of a car suddenly edged close, the cat bounded away back to the apartment. I stood back up against the wall as the car came to a parked stop. Hanji was inside the driver's seat waving at me with her shit faced grin. 

"Finally." I muttered and put my cigarette out.

I walked up to the car and got inside the passenger's seat, relieved that she had the heater on inside. However my gaze instantly went to the floor beside my feet, looking at all the cluttered trash she had in disgust. No matter how many times I tell her to clean this shit up she always leaves her car absolutely filthy. Not noticing that I was judging her car by the look on my face, she pulled a bottle of the suppressants out of her glove compartment and handed it to me. I muttered a thanks as I took the bottle and slipped it into my jacket pocket.

"No problem!" She exclaimed, before closely examining my face with slight worry. "Hey, your face looks pale. Is everything okay?"

"I'm fine, I probably just need suppressants."

I decided not to tell her everything that had happened, not now at least.

"Ah, that must be it. Well I'll probably be going then so you don't eat my face off," She teased.

"It'll take a few days without suppressants until I get crazy like that," I scoffed in response, the corners of my mouth lightly twitching up into a smirk before opening the car door and getting out of her crappy vehicle. "Your car is shit, by the way."

She pretended to be hurt by bringing her hand over her chest and adjusting her glasses. "Hey, don't make fun of my baby! I'll see you at work on Monday, grumpy!" She waved.

"Later," I simply replied, leaving back inside the apartment complex just as her car rolled out of the parking lot and left the area.

I walked back upstairs to my apartment and opened the front door, letting some cold breeze inside before closing it back shut. I wasted no time in pulling the bottle of suppressants out from my pocket and setting it on the kitchen counter. I took one of the pills and popped it into my mouth before reaching for a bottled water inside the fridge and drinking it along with the pill. Once I swallowed it whole, I put the bottled water back in the fridge and sighed, already feeling the burning sensation in my throat going away. 

I momentarily glanced around the room, noticing the deathly silence of it. The kid was nowhere to be seen still and I was starting to wonder if maybe he had somehow left the apartment. I decided it wouldn't be any use to go searching for him in the apartment, if he was here he would come out of hiding wherever he was sooner or later. And then I would have to figure out what to do with him.

I left the kitchen and went back inside my room to go and take a warm shower since I felt filthy from missing one last night, which was rare of me. I always took at least one, if not two showers a day. Turning on the water to make sure it was warm enough, I took off my clothes and got inside, relishing in the warmth of the steam and water. I remained in the shower for a while, shampooing my hair at least twice and using about half of the soap up. After I shut the water off I reached for the towel nearby and dried myself off. I let the towel loosely hang from my waist as I opened the door to let some steam out from the bathroom. Just as I was about to turn back around, some sort of animal like screech reached my ears.

"What the fuck," I tied the towel tight around my waist and left the bathroom to go check whatever had made that noise. As I neared closer to the living room, I heard the faint sound of a cat's wailing and hissing so I ran towards the noise and out of the corner of my eye I saw the balcony door wide open, letting in all the cold air. Besides that, there was Patches scratching at the ground for his life while Eren was kneeled down pulling its tail and dragging the cat towards his fangs.

"Damn it," I cursed and ran outside into the balcony, not caring if I was half naked and it was freezing outside. Eren was just about to sink his teeth into the cat's fur before I grabbed him by the shoulders in attempt to pull him off. He didn't seem to oblige since he continued to pull on the cat.

As the cat wailed in pain from being pulled on, I clenched my teeth in frustration at the kid. "Let the cat go, now." I hissed.

Eren blinked and curiously gazed up at me, his feral crimson eyes soon turning into fear. He immediately let go of the cat and watched as it ran away for its life back to the neighbor's apartment. I angrily grabbed his arm and pulled him back inside the apartment, closing the balcony door shut and whirling to meet his frightened gaze again.

"What the hell is your problem?" I spat.

His gaze wavered and he glanced down to avoid my angry glare. His eye began to tear up and my eyes slowly began to soften as I watched tears fall from his cheeks and hit the floor. His injured eye was now beginning to heal despite it being a mere couple of hours. It really showed how fast vampires could heal, but I was relieved I hadn't done any permanent damage to those pretty eyes of his.

"I'm s-sorry...I'm just..." He hiccuped and staggered to the side a bit until I caught him by the shoulders and balanced him. "S-so thirsty....I'm...-" His sentence was cut off by his heavy struggled breathing. His pupils were dilating like crazy, and the color of his face was starting to leave and grow pale.

He was going to die of malnourishment if he didn't get blood soon.

I pulled his arm to drag him close to me, but he responded by pulling back in fear. After the stunt I pulled earlier, there was no way he trusted me right now. I completely understood.

"It's alright, kid. I'm sorry, I'm not going to hurt you. I promise," I tried to reassure him by moving the back of my hand against his head, but once I felt how dry and dead his hair was, I was slightly shocked. This kid was literally dying from the inside because he wasn't getting any blood.

His eyes were half-lidded, and he slowly edged closer to me by resting his forehead against my shoulder and allowing me to pick him up and carry him to my room. He remained limp in my arms as I placed him on the bed. His head hit my pillow and for some reason he buried his face against it, nuzzling his nose and taking in my scent.

I opened one of the drawers to slip on some boxers before letting the towel fall from my waist. I grabbed the towel up and set it on my shoulder while walking back to the bed. Like hell was I going to let any blood stains get on the bed or blankets, so that's where the towel was going to come in handy. I got in bed and pulled the blankets over my waist while readjusting the pillows and grabbing one to place beside my shoulder with the towel.

Sighing, I glanced over at Eren who was still content buried into one of my pillows. "Oi, brat. You gonna drink my blood or not?" I narrowed my eyes. As if on cue, his eyes instantly fluttered open and he slowly climbed over me to get to the other side. 

"Get on the pillow," I ordered.

He got on top of the pillow and eagerly rested himself on it. I adjusted and pulled the pillow closer so that he would be able to reach my neck without having to crane so far. However, he rolled over to get even closer to me and pressed his face against my neck, his chin resting on top of the towel slung over my shoulder.

"Go ahead," I muttered.

Not even a few mere seconds later, I nearly felt like a small needle was being pierced into my neck. I managed not to wince this time, since it wasn't as forced as before but I could tell he was still desperate by the way he was drinking and how he clutched his small hands against the towel. I was glad now that I had picked the other side of my neck for him to suck on instead of the bruised side.

I turned my head to the other side as he continued to drink, and I silently began to wonder how much blood he needed to drink until I passed out from blood loss.

Although I despised having a vampire drink my blood, he was making the most adorable little sounds every time he suckled on my neck, making me feel like I was some kind of milk bottle for a baby. Or a fucking nipple.

God, I could just picture the imagine in my head. 

Okay Levi, shut up.

Once a few more minutes passed, his drinking began to slow down and he wasn't drinking as fast anymore. I sighed and closed my eyes to rest for a bit until I felt that he wasn't sucking anymore. I turned my head to see what he was doing, and I found him with his eyes closed in a deep sleep. He had latched off my neck and fell asleep against the pillow, his face looking so much more content and healthy now. From receiving blood, the color had slowly started to return to his face which was still closely pressed against my neck, his long eyelashes slightly brushing across my skin.

When I found myself staring at him for a long while, I pulled my gaze away and brought a hand up to rest against my forehead. 

What the hell was I doing.? 

I just fed a vampire kid my blood.

I briefly glanced over at the time and saw how early in the morning it was still. But I wasn't exactly in the position to get up and move around since Eren was basically pressed up against me over my arm.

I reached for the remote and turned on the television that hung in front of the bed in order to mindlessly flip through channels to see if there was anything good on to watch. When I found a decent channel, I heard Eren give a small sigh and slightly move in his sleep. 

I kept my impassive gaze on the television, not even realizing that my hand had moved over his head and started to absentmindedly stroke a few strands of his soft hair back.


	3. Conflicted Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanji finds out about Eren.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh gosh, more than 100 kudos, I'm so pleased ^^ Thanks guys! I'm glad your enjoying this because I certainly enjoy writing this :) Here's another chapter for ya'll ~ Feel free to leave me some comments down below. Peace out!

I gave a content sigh against the pillow, my eyes slowly fluttering open from the tugging feeling on my neck. I hadn't even known I had fallen asleep until I woke up in a haze. I glanced over at Eren who had apparently woke up looking for more blood since the said boy was currently sucking on my neck again.

He barely started to suck before suddenly pulling away and sputtering out fits of coughs. Figuring he would stop coughing soon, I kept my tired eyes close and reached over to casually pat him on the back. However, once the coughs grew more violent he started to gag and hack up blood. My eyes flew open when I heard him start to choke.

"Shit," I hissed, seeing the blood fall from his mouth and go down his chin. I immediately sat up and grabbed the towel from my shoulder to wipe the blood from his chin before any of it fell onto the blankets.

He continued coughing, proceeding to gag even more until his eyes were watery. "I'm gonna throw up," He warned with a moan.

"No, no, no, not here!" I grabbed him by the waist and dragged him off the bed, sprinting and carrying him towards the bathroom like he was some type of grenade that was going to go off at any second. I kicked the lid to the toilet seat up and placed Eren down on the tile beside the toilet so he was free to start puking.

The kid leaned over the toilet and started hurling up blood, specifically my blood that he had drank just a few hours earlier. I gave out an annoyed expression as I watched all the blood leave his body, which meant that I had wasted my blood for nothing. Not to mention that Eren would probably feel hungry again later.

But if he kept throwing up like this, I had no idea what to do.

As he coughed out the rest of the blood, I pulled his hair back and wiped his face with the towel. Before I could properly wipe his face however, he pulled away from the towel and pressed his forehead against the toilet seat before heaving up dry sobs. "I want my mom..." He miserably wailed, giving out hiccups and coughs. Each time he cried he would gag and make himself worse.

I sat down beside him and leaned against the bathtub with a sigh. "I know," I gave a simple reply, not knowing what to do in this situation.

He turned to look at me, with a pained expression on his face. "Y-you hate me..." He sobbed.

I turned away from his solemn teal gaze to stare ahead at the wall. "I don't hate you brat," I answered after remaining silent for a few moments. He didn't respond after that so everything was quiet between us until he sniffled and coughed up more blood into the toilet. Seeing blood trickle down his chin, I curled my lip in disgust and ushered him forward with a tilt of my finger.

"Get over here."

He moved over to me and finally allowed me to properly wipe his face off with the towel that I would have to immediately send to the washer machine to clean since it was stained with saliva and blood. I took a glance at the bathtub once I had closely examined the kid's filthy clothes. He probably hadn't taken a bath in days, maybe even weeks.

"Take off your clothes, your getting in the bathtub." I ordered.

"But I don't wanna," He protested with a pout.

"I don't care what you want, brat. You're filthy. Now take off your clothes."

He gave me a small frown before pulling on the sleeves of his shirt and removing it over his head. After he got it over his head, he needed some assistance in pulling it completely off so I helped him pull his shirt off and toss it aside on the floor. I wasn't even going to bother to wash it, his clothes were going in the trash.

As he started to take his pants off, I turned on the bathtub faucet and let it run for a while to get warm. Once I felt it was warm enough to get inside, I looked over at the kid expecting him to be all ready to get in but instead he was still in his underwear with an adorable flustered look on his face.

"What's wrong?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Your supposed to look away," He sheepishly insisted, lowering his gaze to the floor.

I gave him an are-you-serious look, but decided to oblige to his wishes anyways. I gave out an exasperated sigh and turned my body so it was facing the other way. "Alright, whatever, I won't look. Just hurry up," I muttered. Keeping my face turned, I heard the soft rustling of clothes behind me and water being splashed around once he completely submerged himself into it.

"Can I turn around now?" I glanced up at the ceiling.

"Mhm!"

I turned around and turned off the faucet water since the water had already risen to Eren's shoulders, only keeping his head out of the water. He was so small for the large bathtub, it was slightly humorous. I reached for the shampoo bottle and poured a splotch of it onto my hand before proceeding to lather it on the kid's hair.

I started to think I would probably have to go buy kid's shampoo later on.

Wait, was I actually thinking to let him stay here with me? Great.

Eren kept one of his eyes closed as the shampoo started to fall from his hair and trickle down his forehead. "Why didn't you put any bubbles in the water?" He blinked.

"Because I don't have any," I replied, rinsing off his hair under the faucet once I was done shampooing him.

"Why not?"

"I don't like them."

He started playing with the bar of soap and rubbing it across his skin to clean himself off. "Why not?"

"Don't ask me questions, brat." I grunted, irritated. Once I finished rinsing his entire body off, I shut off the faucet and pulled the plug to drain all the water out. I reached for a clean towel and immediately wrapped it around his body when he stood up so he wouldn't have time to protest about me seeing him naked. He didn't even seem to notice at this point and appeared to be happy for some reason, maybe now that he was clean.

I lifted him up from the tub and carried him out back into the bedroom, setting him down on the bed. He waited patiently rocking his legs back and forth over the bed while I rummaged through the clothing drawer in search of something for him to wear. Everything in my closet was going to be oversized on him, despite how short I was. This is the first time I actually had to worry about my clothes being too big on someone.

I finally picked out a random shirt and flung it aside on the bed beside him. "I know it's going to be big on you, but I don't have anything else for you to wear right now." I explained once I caught him curiously peering down at the shirt.

I left the room in order to let him change in privacy and made my way towards the kitchen, pulling out a wine glass from one of the cupboards and opening up the fridge to grab a rather expensive wine bottle that Erwin had bought me after going on one of his trips. The only alcohol I could get was either by stealing or from my friends. Because like hell I could get this shit legally when people thought I was still some high school kid. Well, they wouldn't be entirely wrong either but I hated when people thought of me as some teenage brat.

I opened the bottle of wine and poured it into the glass, filling it full and going to the table to sit down and drink it. As I began to take a few sips, Eren came wandering into the kitchen wearing my shirt. It took a lot not to smile at the fact that my shirt looked like a nightgown on him. The sleeves outstretched past his hands and the shirt fell right at his ankles. He bumped into my leg and pressed his forehead against it, so I absentmindedly took a hand and set it on top of his head.

"What is it, brat?"

He turned his head sideways to glance up at me, bringing his cheek against my knee. "I'm thirsty again," He protested with a sigh.

I leaned back against the chair while mindlessly picking up a knife that was sitting on the table and playing with it using my fingers. "I figured," I scoffed in reply, before setting down the glass of wine on the table and twirling the knife around. Setting my arm out to rest on the table in front of me, I took the knife and slowly began cutting through the skin on my wrist. As the blood began to leak out, my mind didn't feel as numb as before when I used to do it for other reasons because of depression. It's been a year since I stopped, but I still had faint scars around my wrist as a solemn reminder of my past.

Before the blood could trickle down my arm, I reached it out towards Eren, who immediately responded by grabbing onto my arm and licking the blood off while latching onto my cut wrist and sucking more of the blood to drink. Each time he took a gulp, black spots slowly started to engulf my vision. I had to blink twice and shut my eyes to make most of them disappear but I had been losing so much blood today so I still felt lightheaded.

Thankfully, Eren didn't drink too much this time and stopped after a few minutes. He latched off my arm and sat down on the tile to grab at my leg and hug it. While he silently crawled around and played under the table, I paid him no mind as I pressed a napkin down on my wrist and take another drink from my wine glass.

Everything was quiet until the front door suddenly unlocked and swung open, causing me to nearly choke on my drink while Eren immediately went and hid behind my legs under the chair. "Who the fuck," I angrily peered over at the front door, knife in my hand and ready to use at the intruder. However I literally dropped the knife back on the table when I saw it was merely Hanji who had came in through the front door. I don't know why I ever gave her one of my spare keys in the first place, what a horrible mistake.

"Oh it's you," I rolled my eyes. "The fuck are you doing here shit glasses?"

"I'm sorry for the intrusion but you weren't answering your phone and I forgot to give you these paper mission details this morning that Erwin told me to give to you!" She shoved the papers into my hand before I had time to protest, and proceeded to turn around and start tapping away like usual.

"Your place is always so clean and nice! Nothing compared to my place," She chuckled, lifting up her glasses. As she was about to change the subject to something else she seemed to have caught sight of my bleeding wrist since her eyes immediately flew up in shock and worry.

I glanced down at my wrist and pressed the napkin against the blood to continue to soak it up. "Look, it's not what it looks like." I began to say, but she cut me off short by grabbing my arm and examining the wound further closer. Tears started to well up in her eyes and fog up her glasses.

"I thought you were done with this, Levi! Why would you do this again!?" She cried out.

"I told you it's not what it fucking looks like, if you'd let me explain..." I gave an annoyed scoff.

"It looks exactly what I think it looks like! What else could it be!? What-" She stopped midway on her rant to glance down at the table when she saw some movement underneath. "Wha..who's that?" She curiously kneeled down to get a better look at him. As she continued to stare, Eren continued to hide behind my legs and crawl away to the other end of the table.

"You're scaring him, shit glasses."

"Who is he?" She continued to ask, watching as Eren stood up from underneath the table and pressed against my side. Probably expecting me to protect him from this crazy woman who was staring at him as if he were an alien.

She gave out a silent gasp. "Oh, he's so beautiful! Look at those eyes, how marvelous!" She ran over towards the kid to stare at his eyes, seeming to have forgotten about the earlier topic since she had the attention span of a damn fly.

She grabbed Eren's face, I mean literally grabbed him by the cheeks and gushed over how adorable he was. "I've never seen such a pretty eye color like that before! It's like a mixture of blue and green, no no, like sea-green!" She exclaimed.

"It's called teal, genius." I muttered a sarcastic response.

"Teal! Yes, that's the word," She grinned, before turning her attention back to my wrist. Her smile immediately fell to a frown."You have a lot of explaining to do, first with your cutting and then with this mysterious child who I doubt has anything to do with why you cut!" She fumed. While she stared at me her gaze fell onto my neck bites, and as I watched her glance back and forth at my neck and at Eren, I silently wondered how long it would take for her to realize what was going on.

It didn't take that long since in a mere matter of seconds her eyes flew into realization. Her face went into a mixture of complete shock, horror and delight. I couldn't tell what the hell her emotion actually was.

"He's...this....-" She mumbled, staring back at forth at me and at Eren who she was still holding by the face.

"YOU HAVE A VAMPIRE IN YOUR HOUSE!!?? AND HE'S A KID!! AND HE'S TAKING YOUR BLOOD!!"

"Oh my god, Levi!" Hanji gasped in shock for like the fourth time once she stopped her infuriating screeching. "Is he your child? Did you have some sort of one night stand with a vampire lady?"

"He isn't my kid, don't be fucking stupid Hanji." I grumbled.

"Wait," She turned to Eren. "How old are you, sweetums?"

"Six," He gave a muffled reply since she was still squishing his face. Seeing this, she finally let him go afterwards.

"True, he couldn't be. It's highly unlikely, you would have been only twelve. Still, it's not impossible." She carefully tapped her chin in deep thought.

"Just shut the fuck up." I shut my eyes close and pinched the bridge of my nose.

"How did you find him anyways? Where are his parents?" She continued asking questions despite my request to get her to shut up.

"I'll tell you that later. I can't talk about it while he's still here," I murmured, glancing over at Eren and feeling relieved that he hadn't overheard since he was still continuing to play on the floor, oblivious to our conversation. The last thing I needed was for him to start crying for his mother again.

"Ah, okay I see." Hanji nodded, understanding. "It's so strange though he doesn't look like a typical vampire. Look at his skin, he isn't even pale. Could it be...that he's a damphir?" Her eyes instantly lit up with excitement as she proceeded to examine Eren.

"What the hell is a damphir?" I raised an eyebrow.

"A half-breed! Or half blood vampire! It means it's a cross between a human and a vampire if he's the offspring of a vampire and human," She began to explain. "It's a very rare mix, we have only seen several in the world so far but none that were actually up this close! They're a very special kind of vampire, very different! Oh, I can't wait to study him!" She squealed in delight and clasped her hands together.

I leaned against the chair as I began to wonder. So that would explain why his mother was human.

"So you can take him off my hands then?" I crossed my arms.

"Hm, it wouldn't be that simple. I don't think my place is a very safe place for children to roam around because of all my lab equipment, plus I think it would be better if we hide him and not show him to the other Survey Corps because who knows how they would react. And besides, he seems to have already taken a liking to you," Hanji glanced down at Eren who was still pressed against me.

"If you've fed him your blood you've already formed a bond with him," She continued to explain.

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion at her comment. "What do you mean formed a bond?"

"Oh Levi, you have so much to learn about vampires." She expressed a sigh.

"Well excuse me for not being an expert on vampires, I'm not exactly batshit obsessed with them like you are."

How ironic that she was so obsessed with them when she hunted them for a living.

"Well don't worry, you have me to explain everything to you," She proudly adjusted the glasses above the crook on her nose before she continued to speak. "Vampires can form bonds when take blood form certain people yes, in some ways that's how they find their mate." She came to a brief pause. I nearly spit out my wine once she said the word mate.

"But," She continued. "In this case I'm talking specifically about vampire children. They intrigued me so I decided to do some research on them. By the time they turn two or three years old, around the time they stop breastfeeding off of their mother, their vampire incisor teeth start to grow in. Which means they start feeding blood off of their mother since they're too young to go hunting for humans on their own. From there on they feed on mama's blood until they reach around nine or ten years of age. In some rare cases though if the mother isn't present, they'll feed off of their father's blood or somebody else's blood if neither their parents are around. Or if they don't have anyone, they simply die of malnourishment. Nevertheless, my point is that a deep bond forms between the child and their blood sponsor."

I remained quiet, trying to take in all the information that she had explained. "How much do they have to be fed? I mean, how long would it take until they die from malnourishment," I wondered, remembering how feral Eren had gotten when he didn't have any blood for a while.

"Well, they can go at least a week without food, maybe even two weeks but I would be against it. They go through mental torture if they don't get any blood within a week or two. I would say for them to remain healthy they would probably have to drink blood every twice a week. So every three to four days," She suggested. "However I don't know if the same goes for a damphir, the only research I did was on pure blood vampires. Half blood vampires are so rare, let alone children, so there hasn't been very much research on them yet."

"Well, he's sucked my blood at least three times today. He threw up after the first and second." I gave an irritated sigh, rubbing my aching neck with my fingers. My lightheadedness was a reminder of that.

"He's probably just feeling some trauma over whatever happened with losing his parents," Hanji murmured, which made me feel even more like shit knowing I was the cause of that.

"Tomorrow we'll have to get you in the lab to get more blood into your system. Since you don't drink blood like vampires do, the method for getting enough blood to feed him will be more difficult."

My mouth contorted into a tight frown as I sat up straight and leaned forward to narrow my eyes at her.

"So what your insinuating is that I keep the kid."

"Well yes!" Hanji threw her hands up in the air. "Weren't you listening at all when I said that they form bonds with their blood sponsors?"

I pulled my frustrated gaze away from hers to glance down at the kid who was still beside me. That childish innocence of his as he played. That innocence that was hiding something much darker and evil. No, he wasn't innocent. I had completely become blind to see that he was one of those monsters. One of those monsters who made my life hell, those monsters that killed Isabel and Farlan, those monsters...

As dark thoughts began to cloud my mind, I instinctively scooted away from the both of them and pressed my hand against my forehead to try and ease my mind.

"Levi, are you okay?" Hanji asked with concern.

"No," I raised my head to stare at her, my eyes as cold as ice. "I'm not keeping that kid, that fucking thing in my place. I don't give a shit what you do, just find somewhere else for him to stay. He's not staying with me."

At my words, I could feel Eren stop and stare up at me with hurt eyes, but I didn't dare look back at him. I didn't care.

"Levi!" Hanji solemnly chastised me, looking down at Eren as if to remind me he was there. He had now averted his gaze to the floor, probably about to break down in tears. Hanji immediately took him in her arms and comforted him by softly rubbing her fingers across his back.

"He isn't like those other vampires," She shook her head.

"You don't know that," I hissed, moving away from the table and instantly regretting it since I felt a wave of dizziness hit me once again. I had to lean against the couch to balance myself before walking over to the other side of the living room.

I should've just left the kid.

I shouldn't have fed him my blood. Then I wouldn't have this stupid bonding thing to worry about.

Now I couldn't get rid of him.

Hanji decided to ignore my angry protests, and tried to cheer Eren up by sitting him up on her lap. "Don't pay him no mind, sweetie. He's just grumpy." She teased, wiping away at his falling tears. I had the urge to roll my eyes.

I turned away from the living room without saying another word and walked back to the bathroom in order to take a shower again, yes. To relax my mind and wash away the blood off my wrist and neck.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~

I remained in the shower for at least an hour, enjoying the peace and quiet of the room and the warmth of the water hitting my face and neck. After I was finally done, I turned off the water and got out of the shower before wrapping a towel around my torso and leaving back into my bedroom to change into clean clothes. Once I had pulled on a white shirt and some grey sweatpants on, I left the bedroom and casually made my way back to the living room.

As I walked along the hallway I only heard silence, which was odd considering it was Hanji. At first I figured that she had just put on some television for them to watch but when I didn't even hear the television on, I began to wonder. When I walked inside the living room, my suspicions were answered once I saw nobody else in the room besides me. The apartment wasn't huge, so there weren't that many places to look in to figure out that Hanji had left the apartment, with Eren.

I began to feel an odd tugging feeling at my chest, of worry?

No, it couldn't be. I wasn't worried. Why would I be.

Thoughts immediately began to shoot through my mind again as I started wondering if Hanji had listened to me and took Eren somewhere else. To give him to someone else.

I sat down on the chair and bit on the tip of my thumb, a habit I had if I was thinking of something too hard. I felt irritated with myself for thinking so much about this. This was what I wanted, wasn't it? I didn't want the kid, so I should be relieved.

But relief was the last thing I was feeling at the moment.

After a few moments of sitting and thinking, I found myself suddenly sitting up and running off back towards my bedroom to practically lunge for my phone and call up Hanji. I quickly dialed her number and put the phone against my ear, listening as it ringed several times. I muttered a curse under my breath and leaned against the bed, expecting to be answered to her voice mail.

"Hello?" She finally answered.

I remained silent for a second or two before answering a simple, but calm and collected reply.

"Shit glasses."

"Oh hi, Levi!" She exclaimed, and I briefly heard some noises from the other line.

"Where are you?" I immediately asked once I heard the other noise.

"At Target," She replied.

"Is Eren with you?" I hesitated before asking.

She laughed in response, probably hearing the alarm in my voice. Damn it.

"I thought you didn't want him anymore, hm? Anyways, he's with me right now. I took him here to buy him some clothes since he was wearing one of your shirts."

"Oh," I muttered, rolling my eyes. I should've known. Of course Hanji wouldn't give him away to someone else.

"Don't worry, after we're done shopping, I'll bring you your baby back." She teased.

"He's not my baby," I hissed in response.

Hanji didn't respond right away, and I heard some shuffling and walking noises from the other line. After a few seconds I heard a distant child's voice speaking and a brief, "Hold on Eren, I'm talking on the phone with Levi. Do you want to say hi to him?"

After Hanji had asked that question, I heard Eren yell out a faint "no!" from the other line. I rolled my eyes but found my lips twitching up into a light smirk.

"He doesn't want to say hi to you," Hanji chuckled once she got back on the phone.

"I heard."

"You know, Levi. I know you don't want to admit it, but I have a feeling you were worried about Eren when you called. And you know why that is? It's because you've already formed a bond with him like I said. What your feeling towards him is a protective instinct, it said so in the research." She carefully explained.

"Hey, Hanji."

"What?"

"Shut the fuck up."

She immediately cackled afterwards and replied, "You know it's the truth!" I merely hung up the phone in response and tossed it aside on the bed with an irritated grunt. Afterwards I fell back against the mattress and felt the urge to ram my head in against the wall.

The many different thoughts I was thinking before however, had slowly start to vanish. My mind remained completely blank, except for one thought I was currently thinking about right now that made my stomach turn.

Fuck this stupid bonding shit.


	4. Dire Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi takes Eren with him to work and some drama ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, hope you like this chapter! And thanks a bunch again for the comments and kudos. Feel free to leave me some more for some feedback :) enjoy ~

After the next morning came to the dreaded Monday, I had to wake up early and drive to work. I decided to take Eren with me since I couldn't exactly risk leaving him alone in the apartment for so many hours and I had nowhere else to have him stay since pretty much everybody I knew worked with me as well. As I casually drove through the streets to get to the Recon Headquarters, I took a glance at my rear view mirror to check on Eren who was sitting in the backseat, his legs barely reaching over the seat because it was too big for him. But I wasn't the person to be carrying around a child's car seat around with me.

The kid was sitting quietly looking out the window and shuffling his feet against the back of the passenger's seat. He had eaten a bowl of cereal for breakfast before we left the apartment, which surprised me because I didn't think he could eat any human food until I had remembered that he is half human. He eats normal food whenever he's not drinking blood.

Ever since yesterday over what I had said, he continued to stay mad at me. It was nearly hell trying to drag him from the apartment and into the car with me since he had kicked and screamed his fucking head off, but amazingly I had managed it without completely losing my temper.

Once I pulled up into one of the parking slots and parked the car, I turned the key and shut the engine off before exiting the car and shutting the door behind me. I shivered and cursed under my breath from the freezing weather as I swerved to the other side of the car and opened it up to get Eren out. When he was exposed to the cold weather due to the door being opened, he lifted his fuzzy hood over his head, exposing the ears on top. His jacket was brown, resembling that of a teddy bear that he had bought along with the many clothes Hanji had bought him yesterday. Of course I knew she would buy him ridiculous clothes like these, but the teddy bear jacket was the warmest one I could find for him to wear today along with some random jeans.

I proceeded to pull Eren out of the car by his arm, but he reached back and leaned over against the edge of the seat for whatever reason.

"Wait, I forgot my Legos..!" He protested with a pout for the Legos that he had bought with Hanji as well besides all the clothes. She was already fucking spoiling him despite it being only a day.

"Forget them, let's go." I muttered and forcefully dragged the kid out of the car, losing patience standing outside while I was freezing my balls off. All I wanted was to get inside as soon as possible.

"But I wanted my Legos!" He cried out as I shut the car door.

"You don't need your Legos," I pinched the bridge of my nose in annoyance and shut my eyes close for a brief moment.

"But I was gonna play with them!" He frowned.

"You can play with something else then," I grumbled and grabbed hold of his hand to get him moving but he remained glued to the same spot.

"I wanted to play with my Legos!" Eren wailed in misery.

I whirled and faced him with a fiery glare, this time losing my wavering temper. "I don't give a shit about your Legos!" I hissed, ignoring the weird stares we were getting from other people while they were walking across the parking lot. I merely turned my 'what the hell are you staring at' glare on them, which immediately sent them rapidly turning the other way.

The kid kept his mouth shut afterwards, but glanced towards the ground with upset tears threatening to spill down from his eyes. "You're mean. I don't wanna go with you," He sniffled.

I sighed and dragged him along behind me by his hand, walking across the parking lot to get to the front of the building. "Sorry, but you're stuck with me for now." I muttered.

_Believe me, kid. I'm not thrilled about this either._

As we continued to walk, we heard the sound of a car door opening nearby which caused Eren to release my hand after a few moments of looking up to see what the noise was. "Eren," I gave an annoyed hiss as I watched him dangerously run ahead of me.

"Hanji!" He excitedly exclaimed once we saw shit glasses get out of her car. She grinned back at him and opened up her arms to give him a hug. He jumped into her arms while she lifted him up and gave him a tight hug. It seemed the two of them had already formed a bond.

"Oh, hi my little cutie pie!" She nuzzled his cheek and set him back down on his feet. Her gaze averted up to mine, and she had to suppress a laugh once she took in my irritated expression.

"What happened, grumpy? I heard you two yelling."

Just as I was about to open my mouth to speak Eren answered before I could.

"He didn't let me have my Legos!" He explained with a pout.

"Oh no," Hanji expressed his distress by putting her hands on her hips. "Well don't worry, I'm sure we can find plenty of more things for you to play with, okay?" She assured, to which Eren responded by rubbing his eyes and nodding, taking Hanji's hand in his and walking alongside her as we continued the route across the parking lot.

"When we get in we're going to have to go up to the lab to get you more blood," Hanji murmured to me, obviously taking in my face that was pale as a sheet of paper. The realization that I hadn't stocked up on my lost blood yet hadn't even crossed my mind until she reminded me just now. My lightheadedness wasn't as bad as it was yesterday from receiving a lot of rest, but nevertheless it still slightly remained.

When we got to the front of the towering headquarters and entered in through the front doors, Hanji and I gave a brief nod to the ladies at the counter. They gave us friendly smiles as we quietly walked past them towards the elevators with Eren in tow. I glanced down at the kid, who was still appeared to be content holding Hanji's hand.

"Where am I going to leave him at? I can't exactly take him with me to go check out some mutilated dead bodies like the reports from Erwin told me about," I scoffed.

She thoughtfully tilted her head and tapped at her chin. "I don't know if he can be with me all day either. Gosh, we're going to have to find a daycare to leave him in pretty soon. Actually even better, a kindergarten. He's around the age where he's supposed to go to school right?"

I haven't even thought of leaving him in a daycare before. The idea of it was enough to make me hesitant. I had no idea how Eren would react with other normal kids. The worst thing that could happen was if he got hungry and decided to snack on one of them. Or several of them.

"Hell no." I unconsciously said out loud while those thoughts ran through my mind.

Before Hanji could object to my response, we saw two tall muscular blonde men in the distance heading towards us once we nearly reached the elevators. I instantly recognized them as Mike and Erwin. Nobody else had those definitive characteristics around here. They gave us a wave when they saw us in their line of sight.

Hanji gave a bright smile and returned the wave. "Hey guys!" She exclaimed.

"Shit," I cursed, brushing my dark bangs out of my face. "It's Mike."

She turned to look at me with a confused expression on her face. "Huh? What's wrong with Mike? Did something happen between you two?"

I reached for Eren and tucked him behind Hanji and I, thankful that he didn't protest this time and allowed me to swerve him out of view. "No, you dipshit. Did you forget that Mike can sniff out scents? Specifically vampire scents? He can probably sniff out Eren's." I hissed at her.

Her face finally hit realization as she expressed a panicked gasp. "Oh, shit." She repeated my earlier comment. "What do we do?"

"Just act natural, you idiot." I explained in a hushed whisper, thinking how suspicious we must look to them right now by our constant murmuring and exchanged glances. As they neared closer I could see Erwin staring at us with a raised eyebrow. I casually hit the button on the elevator to open it up just before the two of them came up to greet us.

Mike stood there looking as stoic as ever, while Erwin gave us one of his charming smiles.

Wait, did I really say charming?

"Hanji, Levi." He nodded his head towards us, completely oblivious to the fact that we were standing in front of Eren and shielding him from their view. I'm surprised the kid had stayed quiet so far.

Mike and I never really talked much, only when we needed to on missions or if we were out with friends. Erwin however was a different story. We had an odd relationship, if you would call it that, we were more like acquaintances. When I first joined the Survey Corps I wanted to kill the man, but that's another long story to go into details later.

"Hello you two," Hanji returned Erwin's smile, although it came out as more of a nervous one, making me want to elbow her in the gut. I remained standing with my arms crossed, equally matching Mike's stoic demeanor as I gave a simple "hey" as a response.

"How's your morning been so far?" Erwin inquired.

"Shitty." I furrowed my eyebrows in irritation, using the answer that I used for nearly everything. Erwin chuckled at my comment, his eyes lighting up with amusement right below his huge caterpillar eyebrows.

"I should have figured as much." He smirked.

I was about to faintly smile back until I felt a sudden tug on the back of my leg. My face nearly froze as Eren popped out from behind us and wailed my name, most likely wondering why we were just standing around. He shared a glance with Erwin and Mike for a split second, causing them to look down at him. I could just feel Hanji sweating bullets right beside me.

"Who's the boy?" Erwin questioned, literally seconds before a loud ring had sounded, indicating that the elevator was opening up. Just as soon as it opened I casually shoved Hanji and Eren inside before leaning against the front of the elevator and resting my hand against the wall to block them from view. "Just one of my friend's kids. She had to do something so she left me to watch him," I simply explained.

From behind me, Hanji had already pressed the button to get to her destined floor. "I have to get going to do my lab work, but I'll see you guys later! I'll meet you up in a bit, okay Levi?" She smoothly remarked. I nodded my head once she departed and flashed us a big grin right before the elevator door closed shut. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mike briefly taking in an inhale of air, which made me slightly nervous despite the remaining impassive expression on my face. I watched as his face expression slightly contorted into confusion as he continued to curiously examine me. However, the confusion gradually fell from his face and went back to normal.

"I didn't know you were good with kids, Levi." Erwin softly commented, interrupting our awkward gazes after Hanji left.

"I'm not." I truthfully muttered. "This is my attempt at babysitting." _And hopefully my last._

"Odd," Erwin thoughtfully narrowed his eyes. "I never thought of you as the type to do favors for people. That was a generous thing to do for your friend." He put slight emphasis on the word friend, which made me believe he wasn't completely catching on to my story. I clicked my tongue and imitated his thoughtful expression.

"Is it really that surprising?"

"For you, yes."

"Well I guess I'll just have to keep surprising you then, won't I?"

He gave me a small smirk as he stared into my silver gaze and watched as a mischievous glint appeared before amusingly replying, "I'm sure you won't disappoint."

"We'll see," I returned the smirk.

As Erwin was about to retort a reply, Mike cleared his throat and cut into our conversation, ending it short probably before it got to be flirtatious by the way it was going. "By the way, Commander Shadis told us that he wanted to see you in his office. Something about discussing something. He already went over it with us," He calmly explained.

Erwin adjusted the tie on his shirt and composed himself as he nodded. "Oh yeah, that reminds me. We should get going, Mike." He gestured over to the other blonde man, and they said their curt goodbyes to me before leaving the headquarters to attend to their business affairs. Which left me standing there beside the elevators and wondering what could the commander possibly want.

 _Probably just protocol,_ I decided.

I hit the button in order to open the doors to the elevators and waited for a few moments until one opened. I walked inside and pressed the number that led up to the lab on one of the upper floors. I leaned against the back as the elevator went up to the destination. The Headquarters themselves did a good job in disguising themselves to be a regular business company with the help of the government. Since crime now a days was mainly based around vampires, the Survey Corps were basically considered as Trost's police force now. Of course there were the Police Brigade, but they only handled crimes having to do with the mafia. Which hit close to home for me.

Once the elevator stopped and the doors opened, I walked out and took the path down the hallway. I had to maneuver myself out of the way several times from scientists that were passing by through reading through reports or bring back medical scalpels. All of the body dissecting was done here behind the closed doors.

I came to a halt once I heard a familiar voice calling my name, and turned to see Hanji inside one of the medical rooms with Eren, who was currently playing around with some safe lab equipment. I walked inside, seeing that Hanji had already prepared the package of donated blood. The lab was known to stock on blood packages, blood capsules, anything that had to do with blood by the dozen because of all the dissecting and donating.

"I got it already for ya," Hanji adjusted her glasses, gesturing forward for me to sit down on the chair and slipping on some latex gloves.

"Are we going to have to do this every time I lose blood?" I muttered in annoyance, sitting down in the chair with a sigh. She grabbed a needle and stuck it into my arm, reaching for a vein. When the needle was protruded enough into my vein, she began pumping the blood package and sending blood from the needle back into my system.

"Yes. I'll give you a few packages of these to take home though so you can do it yourself from now on. After a while you'll get used to it."

I hummed in response as she continued to drain the blood packet into the plastic cord attached to the needle. I could already feel the blood returning since I didn't feel as lightheaded as I did before.

"Eren baby, stay here." Hanji peered over to glance at the boy who had apparently gotten bored and began to wander towards the entrance of the room. He sighed and held onto the wall, shuffling his feet and turning to look back at us. I immediately gave him a stern glare, which made him slightly walk back inside and stay put for now. Once Hanji drained the rest of the blood into my arm, she waited a bit until pulling the needle out and discarding the empty packet into the trash as well as her gloves. "All done." She grinned.

I rolled my shoulders back and stood up from the chair, readjusting my jacket up. "I need to go see Shadis in his office, Mike mentioned something about him wanting to discuss some shit with me," I shrugged.

"Oh that reminds me, did he notice anything?" Hanji gaped.

"Who?"

"Mike!"

I shook my head. "No, I don't think so."

"Okay, good." She sighed in relief. "We're going to have to keep Eren away from him from now on just in case."

I nodded in agreement as we edged away from the room. Eren followed close after us as we gestured for him to follow. I was expecting him to grab hold of Hanji's hand once again, but was surprised when he tugged at my jacket sleeve instead, trying to get my attention. I merely glanced down at him with a raised eyebrow.

"What?"

He tiredly rubbed at his eyes in response and tugged on my sleeve again before pressing up against my waist and raising his arms up, indicating that he wanted to be carried. I sighed and lifted him up into my arms, balancing him on my hip while he straddled against my side. He wrapped his arms around my neck and curled up close to me, resting his head against my neck and fiddling with the collar of my shirt.

Hanji gave me one of her wide shit eating grins as she stared at us with googly eyes. "Aww...he wanted you to carry him," She raised her hands to her face to hide her blush. "So cute!"

"Tch, just shut up and go." I glared at her in irritation, waiting for her to stop staring and move from the entrance since she was blocking the doorway. She giggled and we both left the medical room to start heading back down the hallway towards the elevators. After pressing the button to open the doors up, we went inside the elevator and I stood back so Hanji could press the number to lead up to the highest floor where the commander's office resided. We exited the elevator and began walking towards the office.

The highest floor with the commander's office was obviously the nicest floor, with polished fancy tiles and even with its own lounge area in the middle with leather couches and a flat screen television that was currently on the news channel, probably like it always was. As we neared the lounge area, I was a little surprised to see my special unit squad that I recently got leadership of, much to my dislike, all sitting around on the couches. The lazy asses with their feet up in the air and relaxing.

"What the hell," I muttered once Hanji and I stood beside the couches. They all glanced over once they noticed our presence and offered us nervous hellos, aside from Eld who was more composed than the rest.

"Levi! Finally, I-" Oluo shot up from the couch to give me a small salute, but got cut off short when his gaze met Eren's, who was still being carried by me. "Wait, who's the brat?" He questioned, confused.

"That's none of your concern," I impassively replied in annoyance. He immediately responded by dipping his head in respect, apologetic. Once I heard the creak of an office door opening, I carefully handed Eren over to Hanji. She took him and gathered him into her arms and I was relieved he didn't protest since he was nearly about to fall asleep.

The only female of the group, Petra, gazed over at Eren and gushed over him as a usual girl would. I was surprised she was even here, since she was still in highschool and taking classes. This was a side job for her since it was oddly enough a career she wanted to pursue. She had probably managed to get out of classes for today.

"He's so cute," She remarked towards Hanji, and they soon began to chat in idle conversation afterwards.

"Have fun," I spoke, my voice laced with sarcasm. I turned on my heel and left the group before they had a chance to say anything else and headed towards the commander's office, figuring I had made him wait long enough.

As I was about to go to the direction of his office, I came to a halt when I saw him in the meeting room with several other officers. I leaned against the wall and remained standing outside, not wanting to interrupt the discussion. They seemed to be engrossed in their conversation while looking through some reports. When I pried close enough, I could briefly see the reports entitled as a death report. For some reason my blood ran cold, since I started thinking about that kid's mother I had killed by accident just a mere few days ago. That shit wouldn't leave the back of my mind, and caused my skin to crawl every time I thought about it. It constantly tormented me, seeing as I killed her so easily from one stupid mistake. That stupid mistake I couldn't take back.

I felt disgusted.

It wasn't like I haven't killed people before, I have. But all of them had been scum who deserved it. And I willingly put a bullet right in between their eyes.

But never any innocents.

Never a mother who had a small child to care for, despite him being a half vampire. I had tried to make myself feel better by telling myself that she was just one of them, affiliated with those monsters. But what could I have possibly known about her. She was a human for fucks sake.

I remained standing against the wall, wallowing in my own usual regrets, before I caught notice of Commander Shadis gesturing for me to come forward inside with his finger from the window since he noticed me standing outside. I went over towards the door and slowly opened it, careful not to make it creak too much. As I closed the door behind me, I glanced up at the commander and nearly froze to see who was standing beside him.

Commander Pixus, along with his second in command Nile Dok stood on his right side continuing to converse about the reports. On his left side stood no other than my blood relative Kenny Ackerman, whom I currently had an unsteady relationship with due to my past. He had close ties with the mafia, and it wasn't no surprise that we were secretly affiliated with them for spying purposes, but still I had no idea what the hell he was doing here in the meeting office.

I mouthed a silent, "shit." _Obviously I was fucked._

Kenny chuckled at my mortified expression, a cigarette hanging from between the side of his lips as he gave me one of his smug smirks. "What's wrong, nephew? You don't look too thrilled to see me."

"Tch," I narrowed my eyes.

"Levi, sorry if this came off as a surprise for you. We needed some of your uncle's skills for this predicament we received in these reports. You don't mind, do you?" Commander Pixus explained.

"Of course not," I bit back a sarcastic reply, my expression falling back into usual irritation. Like I even had an opinion in this matter.

"Good, you won't be here long so we can allow you to return to your duties as quick as possible. You see, we've been calling in all of the higher ranked hunters to give you an insight about all the recent deaths that have been happening nearby. It seemed several of the vampire covens have moved closer into the city. So this is just to tell you to use extra precaution in your missions whenever your alone or with your special unit team, despite your excellent capability as a hunter."

"One of the deaths in the report was very close to your residential area, but we can't go into details about that right now." Shadis informed.

I remained deathly still as I him mention that one of the deaths was close to my residential area. I tried to think that it might have been another death he was referring to, but I knew I wasn't fooling myself. Even more so as the rest of them started looking back at the reports and I briefly heard them talking about a woman, the descriptive profile matching her perfectly as if the image were still stuck in my head.

"Thank you for your time, Levi. Your free to return to your other business affairs," Pixus nodded at me before him and Shadis left the meeting room, along with Nile following behind.

I remained silent, not being able to say anything else from the overwhelming feeling I was experiencing. I had to sit down on one of the chairs for a bit in order to catch my breath. My whole body felt tense and numb, seeing as they believed a vampire caused her death. When it wasn't, it was me.

I took a deep inhale of air and ran my fingers back through my hair, glancing down at the metal table and absentmindedly staring at the nails dotting around the edges. I barely heard that Kenny was still in the room with me, taking in another puff of smoke from his cigarette. He was the one that influence me to smoke in the first place.

"What's wrong with you, kid? You look as if someone just shot a puppy," He mused with a raised eyebrow.

"That woman in the report," I hesitantly began.

"Oh, so what. I was actually about to tell you about her," He informed, but I wasn't paying attention to what he was saying.

"I killed her." I blurted out without thinking, my expression darkening.

"What." Kenny's face fell, his eyes immediately turning serious as he pulled the cigarette away from his mouth and brought it down. I was confused by his response, I definitely hadn't expected to actually get a reaction from him. Usually he wouldn't even care.

"Are you deaf, old man. I said I killed her." I repeated, turning my glare away from his.

He merely hummed in response, nodding at me as an indicator that he heard. He stepped closer to me and pressed the end of his cigarette against the edge of the table to casually put it out. "You killed her," He imitated my earlier response.

"Yes," I snapped in annoyance, not understanding why he kept having me repeat it.

He rested a hand on my shoulder, and I had an urge to pull away. At first I thought he was trying to be reassuring, but when I felt an a sharp painful blow to my stomach, I doubled over in surprise and glanced down to see that he had punched me. Before I had time to question his crazed actions, he pulled his fist back and grabbed me by the hair with his other hand. My face was suddenly smacked hard against the metal table, and I hissed out in pain as I felt liquid seeping out of my nose and mouth. When he had let go of my hair, I lifted my head up to see droplets of blood from my face hit the edges of the table.

"Do you know who the fuck that woman was?" Kenny hissed into my ear, his eyes flaring in anger, which was unlike his earlier calm actions from several minutes ago. I carefully wiped the blood from my nose and spit out some of the blood forming in my mouth. My silver gaze turned to glare up at him, deciding he had finally lost it.

"What the hell are you talking about."

He grabbed me by the hair again and roughly pressed my face against the table, causing me to wince and clench my teeth in frustration.

"The girl you killed, you stupid shit. That fucking girl was Carla Yeager, Grisha Yeager's mate." He slowly explained as if he were speaking to a child.

My eyes immediately widened. Everyone who knew even the slightest bit of information about vampires knew who Grisha Yeager was. He was one of the higher vampire lords, his coven always remained a top threat to both the Survey Corps and the mafia. He even killed an entire family of aristocrats who had supported us recently. If the woman I killed by accident was his mate, that meant....

He was Eren's father.

_Oh fuck, fuck, fuck._

My luck couldn't possibly get any worse.

"I didn't fucking know, it was an accident." I pressed my forehead against the table and cursed under my breath. "I didn't mean to kill her."

"I don't care if it was an accident, the fact is is that you killed her, period. No wonder my men have been getting slaughtered by his coven. He must have found her dead body and smelled one of the gang's scents on her. All because you didn't stop and use that idiotic brain of yours for a second," Kenny spat, pulling my head closer to his to meet his glare.

"If more of my men die because of you, I won't hesitate to cut off your dick and beat you bloody until you can't even walk."

I impassively stared at his glare without even batting an eyelash at his threat. My lips merely twitched up into a faint smirk. "That's what you care about, your men? Those heartless fuckers deserved it anyways," I snorted, not caring if he wanted to hit me again.

Narrowing his eyes, he tightened his grip on my hair and pressed it further against the cold table. "What makes you think you're any better than them, boy?"

"I suppose I'm not."

"Who's that kid that you've been dragging around with you, hm? Is that Carla's child?" He pulled my head and turned it towards the window, gesturing over towards the lounge area which was a distance away. All of them still appeared to be there since I saw fuzzy objects standing beside the couches. I muttered a curse under my breath and pulled away from his grip, turning my head the other way. I should have expected he knew. He always knows everything.

"You better keep that kid in your sight," Kenny hissed.

"Why do you care." I scoffed.

"So we can have some leverage over Grisha by keeping his child, that's why."

"Why should I listen to you. Maybe I should just give him his kid back," I glared.

"Fine, do it then. But keep in mind that it won't only just cost you your head, but everyone else in this damn building too. He isn't going to just take his child back and accept your apology, he wants blood. If you give him that kid back, then we won't have anything to protect ourselves from his coven going after and killing this whole corporation." He growled, and I realized he had a good point.

I couldn't give Eren back to Grisha.

By killing Carla, I had dragged down the lives of the other Survey Corps along with mine without realization.

I hadn't just merely fucked up this time, I caused an imminent huge disaster just waiting to come.

"If you don't want to watch him, then I could take the boy off your hands and hide him with me." Kenny offered.

"Fuck you, the kid stays with me." I defensively hissed, no way in hell was I going to let him stay with the mafia. Not after what I've seen them do.

He chuckled at my immediate response, patting my shoulder as I continued to glare up at him, my head still resting against the table with a throbbing pain in my face and abdomen. "Atta boy. So you'll watch over him then." He placed the cigarette he had put out earlier in between his lips.

"Like I ever had a choice..." I darkly muttered.

He left the room and I watched as the door closed shut behind him, leaving me alone in the darkness of the room to my own wretched consequences.


	5. Apologies and Bonding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi leaves Eren at the local Kindergarden where he makes some new friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took my longer to update, but to make up for it I think this chapter is longer? Hope you like it and leave me some comments below :) I even threw in Eren's POV in there, his was kinda hard to write since it's a child's POV so I tried not to make it too detailed. Let me know if you want more of those in future chapters though ~

I stood at the front of the local kindergarden beside Eren, holding the kid's hand and trying to think of why I actually ever agreed to do this shit in the first place.

Hanji had convinced me to the day before since when I brought Eren to the headquarters it was a disaster and who knows what would happen if I kept bringing him there. Leaving him at a daycare or at school was hell of a lot better, even I knew that. And I didn't really have a say in it since Hanji went and already enrolled him into the local kindergarden.

I would be taking risks to leave him here, but I couldn't keep taking even bigger risks by leaving him in a goddamned building ran by vampire hunters.

If he got caught then Kenny would really have me by my balls, god bless that insufferable bastard.

I gave out a irritated grunt as I felt my jacket sleeve being pulled on. My steely gaze instantly lowered down to stare at the brat who was currently trying to get my attention.

"Levi?" He looked up at me with those large stunning teal eyes of his. I mentally sighed.

_Fuck, I really needed to stop admiring some six year old kid's eyes._

"What?"

"What is this place?" He nervously questioned. By the way we were watching all the parents drag their crying wailing shitty kids up towards the entrance, I would guess Eren was visually traumatized right about now. The kid probably thought I was taking him to some fucking murder house.

"It's school, Eren." I explained.

_Well, I guess it wasn't too far from being a murder house._

"Like where you learn stuff?" He further inquired, suddenly peeking interest.

"Sure," I muttered.

"But why can't I stay with you?" He continued to question, as I pulled him by the hand and walked up into the entrance of the kindergarden where all the parents were dropping off their kids and leaving. The teacher at the front waved at the parents and smiled down at the children before one of her assistants led them into the classroom.

I sighed and turned to kneel down and face Eren who had a solemn frown on his face. "Look kid, you can't keep coming to work with me."

"But I did yesterday..." He complained.

"Yeah, but Hanji and I can't keep watching you all the time. We have to work."

"But I'll be good, I promise!" He remained insistent.

"Tch, brat." I clicked my tongue, about to retort back another reply until I heard some brief footsteps beside us and someone calling my name.

"Levi, is that you?"

I turned my head towards the direction of my name, thinking how could somebody possibly know me from here. Once I stood up and turned, I saw yet another familiar face of a young dark haired woman standing there with a smiling face beside her young daughter Mikasa. They were close family relatives that I rarely got to visit anymore.

"What a surprise to see you here," Mrs. Ackerman smiled, before catching sight of Eren beside me and curiously averting her gaze towards him. "Who might this be?"

"Just a kid I'm taking care of," I truthfully replied, but kept it simple. Eren wrinkled his nose in protest, glaring up at me with a pout.

"Oh, I see. Well isn't he just adorable." She cheerfully clasped her hands together and brought them back down to hold her daughter's hand. "Maybe him and Mikasa can become friends, right dear?"

Mikasa sheepishly hid behind her mother, peeking out ever so slightly to get a closer look at Eren and I. She gazed up at me in curiosity, probably recognizing me from earlier when I visited them last time a while ago. I scoffed and stepped forward to affectionately ruffle her hair, to which she winced and smiled.

"Still as shy as ever," I slightly smirked.

Mrs. Ackerman giggled and ushered Mikasa forwards. "Well, I have to get going. I'll be back to pick you up after school, sweetie." She bent down to give a small kiss on her daughter's head before standing back up and turning to leave back through the entrance. "It was nice seeing you again Levi, I'll see you next time I assume?"

I nodded. "Yeah, send my regards to your husband."

"Of course," She gave me a warm smile and proceeded to walk outside back to the parking lot.

Once she left, I turned back over to Eren and saw him more upset than usual for some reason, his sulking face lowered to the floor with his arms crossed in a pout. I raised an eyebrow and softly poked his head to get his attention.

"Oi, brat."

He pulled away from my touch and turned the other way, hurt crossing over his face. I sighed, wondering what was wrong this time as the teacher made her way over towards us and smiled. "I see we have a new student," She hummed. "Don't worry, it's always hard to leave them on the first day but he's certainly in good hands here. You can pick him up in a couple hours when school ends."

"I might be late." I impassively replied. The teacher nodded in understanding as I looked down at Eren again, who still appeared to be upset with me and looking the other way.

"Be good, kid. Got that?" I merely pinched his cheek and gave him a stern look. As he continued to keep his head down, I sighed in irritation and made my way out of the school back towards the parking lot.

As the rays of the bright sun hit my eyes from walking outside, I slipped on my sunglasses and quietly unlocked my car door with my keys. Ignoring the weird feeling I was getting in my chest for leaving the kid behind, I decided to push any negative thoughts away from my mind. I needed to relax.

The brat was going to be fine.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~

**Eren's POV**

Once Levi left, the teacher of the place held my hand and smiled at me. I finally lifted my head to look up at her, confused.

_Why was I here?_

_Why couldn't I stay with Levi?_

_Was he leaving me here forever?_

_Was I bad?_

Tears sprung to my eyes, and I had to blink them away.

_Why does Levi hate me...?_

The teacher squeezed my hand in reassurance and knelt down to softly rub my back. I pulled my hand away to rub my eyes and get rid of the tears.

"It's okay, sweetie. You won't be here long, trust me. He'll be back soon, don't worry." She ushered me towards the other girl called Mikasa. I wrinkled my nose in protest, still feeling jealous that Levi liked her more than me.

_Why was he nice to her and mean to me?_

"You can go play with Mikasa here, maybe you two can be friends." The teacher offered, giving us a bright smile.

I looked over at Mikasa as she sheepishly hid behind the collar of her jacket. She waved at me and nervously shuffled her feet before saying a small, "hi" in response. I glared at her and lowered my gaze to the floor, still feeling mad at her.

"Eren, aren't you going to say hi back?" The teacher put a hand on my shoulder.

I blinked and kept my gaze on the floor, until I heard the teacher start to impatiently tap her foot next to me. She gave me a stern look and I sighed, slowly lifting my gaze up to Mikasa.

"Hi..." I mumbled back.

The teacher patted my head and we both stayed quiet afterwards, looking down at the floor as we followed the teacher inside the classroom. It was a colorful room, with lots of shapes and numbers on the wall. All of the other students were sitting on low rounded desks around the room. Mikasa left to go walk over to her table, probably where her friends were.

After I stared at all the other kids I looked up at the teacher, feeling nervous.

"Go sit down at a table, Eren." She offered me a warm smile and gently pushed me forwards.

I hesitantly edged forward and took a seat at the nearest empty table, next to some other boys. Once I sat down, I watched the teacher go stand up at the front of class and begin today's lesson about numbers.

"Where is your backpack?"

I looked over at the boy next to me, who had asked me the question. He had blonde hair in a bowl cut, which sort of made him look like a girl. But I knew he was a boy because he was wearing boy's clothes. Feeling confused at first, I slightly peered around the room to see that everybody else had a backpack besides me.

A small gasp escaped my mouth and I lowered my gaze, suddenly feeling embarrassed.

"I don't have one."

The boy tilted his head and shrugged. "That's okay, you awe new right? My name is Awmin," He smiled.

"Hi, Awmin...my name is Eren," I greeted.

"Hi Ewen! Do you want to be my fwiend?"

"Okay," I smiled.

"We awe gonna be bestest friends!"

I happily nodded. "Bestest friends!"

~^~^~^~^~^~^~

After sitting in class for a while, a bell rang and the other kids started to get up to go outside. I watched as all of them began to leave their stuff and run outside to go play. When Awmin got out of his seat, I looked over at him.

"Where are they going? Is it time to leave?" I hopefully asked.

_Could I go back with Levi now?_

Awmin shook his head and grabbed my hand to lead me away from the table and outside with the rest. "No silly, it's wecess! We can go play now," He explained.

"What's wecess?"

"It's when we get playtime!"

I followed him outside and towards the playground, where most of the other kids were at. A lot of them were either on the swings or slides, so we walked over to the isolated sandbox in the middle of the playground. Awmin sat down in the sand and picked up a pail to scoop up some of the sand and put it in the bucket beside him. When he saw I was still standing there, he looked up at me and handed me a pail.

"Come on Ewen, let's build a sandcastle!" He pressed.

"How?" I sat down in the sand next to him, dangling the pail and patting it into the sand.

"Like this. You scoop sand in the bucket and then you put it upside down," He began to explain, scooping the bucket full with enough sand before flipping it over against the sand and removing the bucket to make a rectangular shaped castle with the sand.

"That's it?" I stared in awe.

"Mhm, now you try!" He handed me another bucket.

I eagerly took the bucket and began to scoop enough sand into it until it was full. Afterwards, I flipped it over and pressed it into the sand.

"Now pull the bucket off."

I slowly removed the bucket and watched as the rectangular castle remained in the sand. Feeling proud, I looked over at Awmin and beamed.

"I did it!"

He nodded and smiled back at me. "Gweat, now we can both build sand castles!"

I began patting down the castle as we both started building more sand castles and decorating them using other of the sand toys. I was having so much fun I barely noticed another set of footsteps slowly approach us beside the sandbox.

"Can I play with you guys?"

A voice asked, and I turned over to see Mikasa standing there, shyly fiddling with her sleeves. I angrily puffed my cheeks out and looked away from her.

"Sure, Mikasa!" Awmin smiled and handed her a pail. I moved away with my arms crossed as she sat beside us and started scooping up sand into her bucket. After we sat building castles in silence, pretty soon more of the other kids came up to the sandbox and started watching us with curiosity.

"Can we play too?" One bald boy asked, who was standing beside a brown haired girl that was contently munching on her animal cracker snacks.

"It looks fun!" Another boy with dark hair and freckles came up, a friendly grin on his face.

"Sure," I nodded and handed them pails to play with.

"Thanks! I'm Connie, what's your name?" The bald boy sat down next to me, preceded by the other brown haired girl. "My name is Sasha!" She mumbled with a mouthful of crackers. The freckled boy took one of the other pails too and sat next to us in a circle. "I'm Marco, hi!" He beamed.

"Hi, I'm Eren." I smiled at them, happy that I was already making a lot of friends.

They smiled back and we continued working on the sandcastles together for a while as a team. When I started working on my fifth castle, I heard a loud snap so I looked over towards the direction of the sound and saw Mikasa holding a broken pail in her hands as she gasped in disappointment.

"My pail broke..." She tearfully mumbled.

Everyone stared at her in sympathy and tried to find her another pail for her to use but all of them were being used already. I blinked and stared over at another sandbox where other kids were playing in and saw one lone pail sitting by itself on the ledge.

"I'll go get you one," I offered, so she wouldn't cry. Even though I was still mad at her.

"You will?" She sniffled, her cheeks growing pink.

I nodded and made my way over to the other sandbox. Once I got to the edge, I reached for the pail and smiled before turning and heading back to our sandbox. However suddenly, I was stopped by someone reaching out and grabbing my arm. When I felt the touch on my arm, I looked over confused.

A boy with two colored toned hair angrily stared at me with a pout, pulling his hand away and crossing his arms.

"Hey, that's ours. You can't use it, dummy!"

I blinked at him. "But...you weren't using it."

"So? It's still ours!" He protested and snatched the pail right out of my hand.

"But can't we share?"

"No, go away. Nobody likes you!" He roughly shoved me. I fell backwards onto the floor and landed on my back.

I stared up at him with teary eyes as he mockingly stuck his tongue out at me and turned the other way with the pail in his hand. I felt confused and shocked of what a jerk he was, but as I watched him leave back to the other sandbox, I found myself getting angry all of a sudden.

I furiously wiped at my eyes and glared at him before standing up and brushing my clothes off from the dirt.

"Hey!"

He stopped and turned back around to look at me, wondering what I wanted.

Before I could even think, all of a sudden within seconds a loud slapping noise echoed throughout the area. After the noise he was on the ground with a large red mark on his face, staring up at me in horror before breaking into large sobs. Everyone else in the playground stood deathly silent.

I glared down at him with my arm still out, my body shaking with anger.

"Eren!!" The teacher shouted from inside the classroom.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~

 **Levi's POV**  

 A loud shrilling scream emitted from the creature I was currently holding by the neck and stabbing through the heart with my knife. I glared into it's soulless enlarged darkened pupils as the blood from the creature spattered all over my shoes and jacket.

"Tch, disgusting." I expressed my immense dislike by glancing down at my blood soaked clothes with irritation. As I held it up by the neck by one hand, I used my other hand to casually pull out my handkerchief and wipe off the blood that had landed on me.

"Levi, sir! That's the last of them," Petra informed me, before pulling out her stake from one of the lifeless vampire bodies.

"Good," I tightened my grip around the vampire's neck until it finally snapped and broke. The creature's head immediately went lopsided with its fangs still bared. I pulled my hand away and watched as it dropped to the floor in a crumpled heap. I pressed my boot against it's head and glanced sideways to look back at my teammates who were standing around once they finished off killing the rest of them.

"Oi, Oluo, get the fuck over here and burn them before they come back to life," I drawled in a bored tone.

"Yes right away, sir!" He replied, and began scorching each of the bodies into oblivion with his flamethrower. Once he got over to the one I had killed just now, I stepped aside and walked away from the flames. I stood beside the others and waited until Oluo finished burning up the bodies as I pulled one of my cigarettes out and stuck it in between my lips.

"Alright, now that's done..." I mumbled when the last one was burnt to a crisp. "Erwin wanted us to-"

A loud buzzing sound from my noise interrupted me and I grumbled, expecting it to be a call from Erwin.

"That must be him now," Gunther suggested.

I rolled my eyes and pulled my phone out before pressing answer and putting it against my ear without even bothering to check who was calling first.

"What." I coldly answered.

"Hello..." A hesitant female voice spoke, certainly not belonging to Erwin. "Is this Levi?"

"This is him. Who's this?" I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion.

"This is the school calling." The voice on the other line replied.

I walked away from the group to slowly pace across the alleyway, feeling even more confused than before.

"How the fuck did you get my number."

The lady gave out a small baffled choking sound at my rude and blunt reply, but nevertheless recomposed herself and cleared her throat, brushing past the comment. "We looked up your name, I'm sorry for the inconvenience we might have caused, but it's a matter concerning Eren." She explained.

My eyes suddenly widened, and I immediately stopped pacing. I was afraid for what she might say next and have my worst fears come true.

"What did he do." I spoke a little faster than I intended, my breathing become hitched with worry.

"Well, he hit another student in the face and insulted him. Both of them are being kept in the office right now, I'm afraid your going to have to pick him up. He's been suspended."

"W-what?" I stupidly stuttered, feeling myself nearly sigh in relief that it wasn't something worse like biting another kid. Grant it, even though what he did was still bad that he got suspended for it. Hell, I didn't even know it was possible to get suspended from kindergarden.

I was too wrapped into my own thoughts to even notice my teammates giving me weird looks from either actually hearing me worried or actually hearing me stutter for once. And the girl on the other line who kept on calling my name after I stayed in silence after a while.

"Mr. Ackerman, are you still there?" She repeated once I came back to my senses.

"Yeah, sorry. Uh, I'll be there in a few to pick up the brat-I mean, the kid from school." I cursed under my breath.

"Thank you, Levi. We'll see you then."

I hung up the phone and slipped it back into my pocket. Brushing a few strands of my hair back with my fingers, I sighed and turned back to my group, almost snorting in amusement once I saw the obvious shocked curiosity on their faces.

"Tch, the fuck are you staring at?" I immediately composed myself, which caused them to immediately turn away and pretend to avert their gazes towards something else. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, sensing one of my shitty headaches coming in.

"As you may of heard, I need to leave. You guys can handle it from here, right?" I flicked my wrist.

"Of course, Levi. We'll take over from here, no worries." Eld nodded, remaining the most composed. Which is why I put him in second command in the first place. The others followed after him by respectfully nodding as well.

"Good, tell Erwin I had to leave due to....a family situation." I explained, deciding that should be enough of an excuse. They nodded back again as I turned around and began to make my way back to the parking lot complex towards my car.

Once I got into my car, I pulled out of a parking lot like lightning, causing the tires to screech before speeding off towards the freeway and swerving past other cars to get to the school on time.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~

I pulled straight into the nearest parking slot I could find closest to the school when I drove into it's parking lot and got out of the car, practically slamming the door shut behind me and walking up to the entrance of the school to try and find my way to the office.

I walked down the colorful hallways and stopped in front of a door that had the sign office. Some people were already talking inside, so I wasted no time in opening the door and walking right in. The teacher had her hands folded against her desk as she talked to the mother of a boy, which I assumed was the kid Eren hit since he was quietly sitting in the corner of the room by himself.

"Ah Levi, good you're here." The teacher looked up at me once I walked in.

At the sound of my name, Eren instantly perked his head up and grinned when he saw me, probably almost in relief.

I scoffed and sat down on one of the chairs next to the other kid's mother, who was currently glaring at me for whatever reason. I crossed my arms and calmly leaned against the seat, staring at the teacher with annoyance.

"I had to leave my job early for this, so can somebody please enlighten me with the details of what happened?" I spoke, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Your child hit mine!" The other kid's mother protested, holding her boy close to her. The kid kept his head down the whole time like Eren, and hugged his mother for some comfort. As I was about to remark back, Eren interrupted before I could.

"He pushed me first! And he was mean to me!" He defensively pouted.

I sent him a glare, which immediately silenced him. "Eren, quiet."

He sighed and solemnly put his head back down to gaze at the floor, while the other boy's mother proceeded with her ranting.

"My sweet little Jean would never be mean to anyone. It's that other boy who's lying, he purposely hit my son! He's a bully! I don't know why my child is being held accountable for this," She seethed at the teacher.

I narrowed my eyes and turned to face her, getting fed up with her words. "Listen, bitch. We have no idea what happened. So why don't you keep that big trap of yours shut before you go around shouting false accusations. For all we know your kid could be as equal to blame as mine," I gritted my teeth.

She gasped in shock at my words, taken aback at my insult.

"Let's not resort to using profanity around the children, alright? Both of you just calm down. Now, the other students that saw what happened told me that Jean was the one who had pushed him first, but then Eren hit him in the face. So both of them are to blame. We absolutely do not tolerate any name calling or acts of violence in this school. Therefore, I am going to have to suspend them for a day." The teacher calmly explained.

"Tch," I sent a sideways glare at the mother, proving my point from earlier. She merely scoffed in irritation and remained quiet for the remainder of the time.

"Now that we've discussed the issue, all of you are free to go." The teacher waved her hand, probably growing tired of dealing with us already.

I was more than eager to leave since sitting in a teacher's office just reminded me of my delinquent days in high school, which was probably why I dropped out early.

As the mother and her son left the office, I stood up from the chair and briefly glanced at Eren as an indicator for him to follow. He slipped off the chair and cautiously followed after me out of the office, keeping his gaze away from mine in fear of getting a lecture from me. We both stayed quiet as we walked out through the entrance of the school and back into the parking lot, walking across the sidewalk and crossing streets.

"You can't hit people, Eren." I finally spoke, feeling a little upset since he had gotten suspended on the first day, least of all from kindergarden. Now I had no place to leave him tomorrow.

"But...he started it!" He cried out.

I stopped and gave him a stern glare. "I don't care who started it."

"It wasn't my fault! I tried to be good...I tried..." He began, close to the verge of tears now. "I'm sorry I'm bad. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. My mom...she died because I was bad. And n-now you hate me because...cause.." He broke off into small sobs, the tears now freely flowing down his face as he hiccuped and brought his hands up to his eyes.

I felt a horrible sudden sinking feeling in my heart as I watched him cry and blame himself for his mother's death.

_God, I felt like a monster._

"Eren..." I moved to reach towards him, but he pulled away from my hand and started running ahead of me along the sidewalk. I cursed under my breath and quickly followed after him, calling his name to stop. He kept running even when he reached the edge of the sidewalk, running straight into the street.

"Kid, get back here." I sighed and stopped at the edge of the sidewalk once he went straight into the street. As soon as I was about to lecture him about the dangers of running into the street unsupervised, I heard the nearby roar of an engine and tires rolling against asphalt. I barely had time to turn my head before I saw a car speeding across the road, dangerously passing the twenty five mile speed limit and heading straight towards Eren.

I felt my body suddenly freeze up as he stood in the middle of the road to look back at me when I called him, standing straight in the line of sight in front of the speeding car.

"Eren, get out of there!" I frantically yelled, just as soon as the kid turned around and caught sight of the car heading straight at him. Without thinking straight, I instinctively lunged forwards towards him before I heard the sickening screech of the tires coming to a halt and everything going black for a few moments.

As I heard a faint rumble of a car and faint voices shouting with worry, the darkness slowly started to disappear when I opened my eyes, not even realizing that I had closed them. When I had lunged forward I had apparently managed to grab Eren since I was holding onto the kid and pressing him against my chest with my hand over his head as a mean to somewhat provide a protective coverage. He had his arms wrapped tightly around my neck and I felt his heart rapidly beat against mine.

"Levi..." He sniffled.

"Shhh..." I softly traced my fingers along his back and continued to hold his shaking body close.

Until I realized he wasn't the one shaking. I was.

"I'm so sorry! I wasn't paying attention! Oh my god, are you two okay?" The man who was driving the car stepped out and ran towards us. However he stopped before he could get too close once I shot him a menacing glare.

"Gee, I don't know you dumb fuck. How would you feel if you almost got ran over by some idiot who decides it's okay to speed around a kindergarden, for fucks sake? You almost ran my kid over!" I angrily hissed.

"I know, I'm so sorry!" He apologized again.

"Just get the hell out of here before I beat the living shit out of you," I spat, nearly wanting to press charges on the fucker but knew it would be pointless since nobody was harmed anyways. The guy gave another apologetic nod before eventually retreating back to his car and driving away from the school a lot more slowly this time.

Eren slowly pulled his face away from my chest and stared up at me in tears. I continued to stroke his back to reassure him everything was fine. "I'm s-sorry.." He sobbed, wiping his tears away and coughing.

I picked him up and carried him in my arms as he wrapped his legs around my torso and buried his face into my neck. I walked away from the street and stepped back into the sidewalk, starting to tense down and calm myself after what could have happened.

The car could've hit the kid.

_Fuck, why did I freeze up like that? Was I so worried for his own safety that much?_

As he continued to stifle sobs against my neck, I stroked his hair and adjusted my grip on him in my arms. "Oi, kid. You're alright. It's alright." I murmured, turning my head and pressing my cheek against the top of his head before slowly swaying him back and forth to calm him down.

"Facile, gosse. Je suis ici, vous êtes très bien." I spoke in fluent French as I wiped the remainder of his tears away with my thumb, which seemed to calm him down since he slowly stopped crying this time and quietly kept his head rested against my shoulder as I gently swayed him. He sniffled some more and nuzzled his face into my shirt, causing it to get wet with his tears. I tried to ignore the disgusting damp feeling in my shirt by walking back to the car.

"You're getting my shirt wet, brat." I clicked my tongue and continued to absentmindedly run my fingers across the top of his chestnut hair.

"I'm sorry...please don't leave me, Levi." He sadly spoke, his voice sounding muffled since he still had his face buried into my shirt.

I stopped once we got close to the car and narrowed my eyes. "Eren, stop crying. Look at me."

The boy gradually pulled his face away my shoulder and rubbed his eyes as he met my serious gaze with a frown. I gently grabbed him by the chin so that he could pay attention and listen to what I was saying.

"I'm not going to leave you, alright? I'm sorry for saying that I was, I just...forget that. You're my responsibility now." I explained with a sigh and lightly flicked him on the forehead. "So stop crying."

He raised his hands up to his forehead and gave me a small smile before hugging me close and wrapping his hands back around my neck. The hug caught me off by surprise a bit, but nevertheless I hugged him back. The corner of my lips twitched upwards and before I realized I was giving one of my small rare genuine smiles.

_Damn, this kid has a bigger effect on me than I thought._

"I'm thirsty," He spoke, soon breaking off the sweet silence between us. His eyes momentarily glinted a crimson red.

_Oh yeah, I almost forgot about that._

My hand dropped from his head and I continued walking towards the car, moving the kid sideways in my arms and adjusting him on my hip with one arm as I used the other hand to reach into my pocket for my car keys to unlock the car.

 

"Let's get you some blood, then."


	6. Possessive Instincts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren goes exploring and meets Erwin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter ^^ Hope you guys like it, leave some comments below. I love all the kudos and comments I've gotten so far :)

I rested on my couch with my head propped up against one of the pillow cushions with one leg bent while the other lay sprawled out.

Eren was laying beside me with one of his arms resting against my chest as he contently drank the blood from my neck in silence. He had drank a lot of my blood yesterday so I had to use one of those blood packets Hanji had gave me. I expected him to be done for another few more days but this morning he insisted on more blood. I tried telling him no but that only resulted in him on the verge of crying, so I finally gave in and let him have more. The brat was already getting spoiled. For some reason he was completely enamored with my blood.

By the way he was softly breathing and his usually noisy suckling was beginning to subside, I gave a small sideways glance at him to see if he was starting to fall asleep. I was surprised he hadn't yet, since he usually does.

However the kid's eyes were still wide open, currently gazing straight at the Scooby Doo show on the television with interest. I rarely watched any TV out in the living room so it was mostly on just for his entertainment.

I rolled my eyes and pulled my phone towards my face to check for any new messages that were actually worth my time to read. I skipped through most of Hanji's texts and opened up a few random messages that were just from the other SC members but none of really importance, so I closed the message app and played some trivia game I had on my phone to pass my boredom.

I played for a while until I noticed the time on the upper corner of my phone.

"Alright, that's enough before you kill me." I sarcastically ordered, running my fingers through the kid's messy bangs in order to lightly pull him from my neck. He stopped sucking and finally pulled his fangs away from my neck, causing a weird "pop" noise as he did.

I sat up against the couch and pulled out my handkerchief to wipe off the remaining blood off my neck that had began to leak through the two small hole marks. I held it pressed to my neck for several moments until the blood had stopped leaking. Thankfully, it was getting less messier the more times Eren drank from me.

I pulled my cravat from the table and tied it around my neck, which was affective in hiding the marks.

Eren continued to watch the Scooby Doo episode and ignore everything else, even as I sat up from the couch and called his name a few times. I clicked my tongue and reached over to grab the remote before turning off the TV.

"Hey," He immediately whined and whipped his head towards me.

"We have to go, brat." I ignored his pouting and grabbed the car keys sitting on the counter, as well as my other work belongings. I had been assigned another mission today but fortunately it would be shorter than most. The real issue was the problem of where the hell I was going to leave Eren while I worked.

"Go where?" His voice suddenly peaked interest, finally having his full attention.

I grabbed his jacket and wrapped it around him while he stretched his arms to fit them inside the sleeves. "I gotta work, kid."

His shoulders slumped down, obviously instantly losing interest and growing more sullen now. "Why can't I go to school?"

I raised an eyebrow. "You got suspended, remember? Because you hit another kid."

"But he deserved it," Eren mumbled.

"Eren," I warned, giving him a stern glare. He closed his mouth shut and without another word, followed me out of the apartment and grabbed onto my hand as he walked across the parking complex. I managed to get him into the backseat without any further complaints this time, and the rest of the drive to the headquarters was surprisingly quiet.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~

I parked the car once I pulled into the parking lot of the headquarters and got out from the driver's seat to go around back. Once I expected the kid to quickly get on out once I opened the door but found him with his head lolled over to the side and his eyes half closed, indicating that he had almost fallen asleep or had and just woke up. Giving out a sigh, I unbuckled his seatbelt and pulled him into my arms to carry him on my hip.

He dangled his legs against my waist and leaned his head against my shoulder to close his eyes again as I closed the car door shut with my free arm and walked up to the headquarters. The minute I walked inside I nearly ran into Hanji as we both made our way across the hall.

"Levi! There you are! And little Eren! But, why is he here? Shouldn't he be at the kindergarten?" Hanji pulled up her glasses, confused. "Did you scare them away, Levi? Maybe you scared one of the kids...Did you kill the teacher, hm?"

"No shit glasses, I didn't kill anyone." I rolled my eyes. "The kid got suspended for hitting another kid.

Hanji let out a shocked gasp and turned her gaze over at Eren who had hidden his face deeper into my neck. "Eren, you little rebel, you." She put her hands on her hips and reached forward to lightly pinch his cheek.

He immediately giggled in response and squirmed in my grip to pull away from her hand. As soon as that small childish giggle of his reached my ears I felt a strange type of feeling tugging at my stomach, like one would get if they felt butterflies.

I immediately shook the instinctive feeling off and swore under my breath.

_I needed to stop._

"How long is he suspended for?" Hanji questioned.

"Just today, I'm leaving him with you." I informed her while trying to pry Eren off of me but the kid started to whine and tighten his grip around my neck. He shook his head and brought his earlier dangling legs up to straddle around my waist as if his life depended on it.

Hanji laughed at his reaction. "It seems like he doesn't want to leave you."

I glared down at the boy who had a death grip on me and brought my hands back down to my sides, not even having to hold him anymore since he was doing that by himself.

"Eren, let go."

He tightened his grip even more, if possible, around my neck and shook his head again. "Noo! I wanna stay with you!"

"Brat, you're going to break my neck." I hissed under my breath, slowly feeling the circulation in my neck starting to go away.

"Don't leave me, Levi!" He whined.

"You're just going to stay with Hanji for a while," I tried to reason with him.

"I don't want to!"

"No shit, who does." I muttered in annoyance, ignoring the angry pout Hanji gave me. I cleared my throat and rolled my eyes, attempting to calm the kid down by patting his shoulder. "But you don't want to hurt Hanji's feelings now, do you?"

Even though his face was still buried on my shoulder, Eren was starting to calm down at this point since he hesitantly and slowly shook his head. "No..." He mumbled.

"Well good, then you'll stay with her for a bit until I come get you." I lifted his chin up to stare at his face. His lip quivered before he gave out a shaky sigh and nodded his head. I gently ran my thumb over his chin to reassure him.

"You're going to be good, right?"

"Yes..." He loosened his grip on my neck and I adjusted my arms back on him in order to hold him up.

"Come on sweetums, we can have fun together!" Hanji beamed at the kid. He nodded and rubbed his eyes first before reaching over towards her. She immediately took him from my arms to carry him. He calmly rested his head on her shoulder now.

I felt a sudden pang of jealousy as I watched him cuddled in somebody else's arms besides mine.

_Jesus Christ, I really needed to get away from the kid. I was losing my mind._

"I'll see you both later then," I sighed and rubbed my fingers against the temple of my forehead. Hanji grinned and waved while Eren stared at me from her shoulder.

I then proceeded to turn the other way and leave in the opposite direction.

_Don't look back, Levi..._

I muttered a curse under my breath as I clenched my fists and had to practically will my mind not to look back at him.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~

  **Eren's POV**

When Hanji took me back to her work place, I sat under her desk and played with a weird skeleton figurine she gave me to play with while she worked on some papers. I knew she was busy so I didn't want to bother her too much.

_Plus, I wanted to be good for Levi! Maybe he'll reward me if I am._

I smiled and raised the skeleton figurine, mister skeleton man, to fly around like a rocket. "Vroom, vrooom!" I hit the figurine against the machine running the computer and dropped it onto some wires that were all tangled up behind the desk. I pulled on one of the wires to try and untangle them out.

"Eren, baby cakes? Be careful, don't touch any wires, it's dangerous." I heard Hanji say, so I stopped touching the wires to stare up at her. She pulled her chair back to look down at me and see what I was doing.

"Sorry," I frowned.

"It's okay," She reached down to ruffle my hair. "Now why don't you play out of the desk where it's safer?"

I stuck my bottom lip out and crawled out from under the desk after I grabbed mister skeleton man from the wires. After Hanji turned back her chair closer to the computer to get back to her work, I went and sat in the corner of her office with a bored sigh.

I climbed on top of one of the wheely chairs and set mister skeleton man on the table beside me. Seeing a cup full of highlighters and markers, I curiously reached forward and grabbed a marker from the cup to draw and color on a nearby notepad.

A sudden noise of a door closing nearby caused me to drop the marker and curiously look over to see who it was. Someone had closed a door in the room beside us, and I heard some chattering and footsteps as some people walked by the room. I slipped off the chair and looked over at Hanji who still had her gaze glued onto the computer.

_She wouldn't notice if I went exploring, just for a little bit._

I quietly walked out of the room and edged myself through the halfway open door, trying not to make it creak. I softly giggled once I successfully made it to the other side of the door and stared down the hallway in awe. The other people who passed the room were already walking down the hallway and going into other rooms.

I slowly began to walk down the hall and look around to make sure nobody was around. Once I was sure the area was clear, I bounded towards the end of the hallway and ended up in another separate room that had a lot of couches around with a TV up front. I walked up to the TV to see if anything good was on but when I saw it was just news, I scrunched my nose in disappointment and walked around the couches. As I heard another nearby door open, I looked over and saw a set of footsteps heading towards me.

I glanced down at the large leather shoes approaching me and tried to take a few steps back but the other person already bumped into me. They muttered an 'oops' before placing their hand on top of my head.

I looked up to see a blonde man with thick eyebrows curiously staring down at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Huh, how did a kid like you get in here?"

I blinked at him and stared at him with my lips slightly parted.

He looked so familiar.

"You look like Captain America!" I blurted.

He gave an amused chuckle before kneeling down on one knee to get closer to my height, with one arm draped over his knee. "Hm, I appreciate the compliment. Say, I remember you now. You're the boy Levi's taking care of, right?"

He peered over behind my shoulder as if to check if he was following behind. "What are you doing here by yourself?" He asked again, confused when he saw that nobody was following me.

Instead of answering him, I turned the other way and ran towards one of the couches. He tried calling after me but I already hid behind one of the couches, hoping I could avoid him.

I heard him give out an exasperated sigh, along with his footsteps approaching. As he walked closer, I crawled over to the other side of the couch and peered over above to see if he was still there. He looked over at the back of the couch and furrowed his eyebrows when he didn't see me there. I grinned and dropped back behind the side of the couch, about to crawl back towards the front until I bumped right into him when he had changed his direction.

"Hey," He crossed his arms.

I giggled with enjoyment and ran past his legs to go over to another couch and hide behind it. After a few seconds passed, I leaned over to see if he was still trying to find me. He turned over to look at me, and a look of instant realization crossed his face.

"Ah, I see now. You're playing hide and go seek with me, aren't you?"

I eagerly nodded and dove back behind the couch once he smiled at me and raised a hand over his eyes to count to ten.

"Very well, it seems it can't be helped."

~^~^~^~^~^~^~

**Levi's POV**

I headed back towards Hanji's work lab to retrieve Eren since my mission had went a little faster than I originally expected. It was a lot more simpler this time, all I did was question a few people who were witnesses to some attack and then deliver their reports back to Shadis. I was surprised he had decided to let me off early for the rest of the day, since he wasn't too lenient about his subjects getting breaks.

I sighed as the elevator door opened up to the lab and I proceeded to walk on down the hallway, holding my cup of coffee over the top and taking a few sips. I was curious to see how the two were acting since the kid never left the back of my thoughts since I left him just earlier today. But like hell I was going to admit that I couldn't get him out of my head.

I finally stopped in front of Hanji's work place and opened my mouth to say something, but remained standing there with my mouth slightly agape as I noticed Eren was nowhere to be seen in the room.

Noticing my presence, Hanji finally pulled her attention away from the computer screen towards my irritated gaze. "Oh, hi Levi! What a surprise!-"

"Where the fuck is the kid." I immediately cut her off.

Her face contorted into confusion as she furrowed her eyebrows at me question. "What do you mean...he's right-" She began to say, but once she turned her chair and saw he wasn't in the room either she nervously gritted her teeth. "Oh."

"Yeah, oh." I glared.

"He was here, though! Like, uh, I think just a few minutes ago! Maybe a little more but not too long ago!" She scratched her head, wondering where he might have gone.

"How amazingly observant of you," I sarcastically muttered, setting my cup of coffee aside on the table before bringing my fingers forward and pinching the bridge of my nose. "This is the last time I'm leaving the kid with you, I fucking swear."

"It was only a simple misplacement!" Hanji protested.

"Misplacement?" I hissed in frustration. "How could you lose him? Did you leave the room to go take a shit or something?"

She opened her mouth to retort, but then closed it and began to think. I scoffed at her and she quickly sat up from the chair, looking back at the computer screen. "Hm, I must've been too attentive to my research to notice him leave the room. But he couldn't have gone far, we just need to find him now." She calmly explained, turning back to me.

However, I was far from calm. One of the worst of my fears was that the kid would get lost wandering around and for someone else to find him and find out about him.

"He could be anywhere, you dumb shit." I continued to seethe as I whirled around and left the room in a matter of seconds to search through the hallways. Hanji followed after me and attempted to calm me down, but that just made me glare at her even more.

"I doubt he could've wandered into one of the other work labs. I know for certain he's in this part of the building because I don't think he would know how to use an elevator yet." She reasoned.

"Alright, split up. You search the work labs just in case and I'll search the other rooms." I ordered. She nodded in response and we parted ways once she began opening doors to go inside the work rooms.

I swiftly proceeded down the hallway as fast as I could without breaking into a run. I had to remain as composed as I could, despite some people already passing by me and glancing at me like I was crazy. I still had to stay calm despite the circumstances. If I still couldn't find the kid after an hour then I could flip my shit.

It was going to take forever to find him, the lab area was sufficiently large in area size. I didn't even know where the hell to start looking first.

As I opened the doors that led out of the lab to walk into the lounge area, I didn't bother to look around me as I went straight down towards the other doors. That is, until I suddenly heard a sound of a child laughing right nearby.

I immediately stopped dead in my tracks and turned my head towards the noise.

Well, there was Eren. So my heart level instantly went down in relief. But there was something still odd going on. Why was he hiding behind a couch?

I glanced over at the other sight which involved Erwin slowly walking around the area, deep in thought. He tapped his chin and raised an eyebrow, looking behind the other couches first even though he probably clearly knew which one Eren was behind.

"I wonder where he could be..." He pretended to wonder.

I would have snickered at the amusing scene if I weren't so incredulous at the fact that they had actually met and were now playing together.

Erwin finally went over to the couch he was hiding behind and appeared on the other side, yelling a soft "boo!" Eren squealed in laughter and stepped away from the couch to flail his arms.

The corner of my lips twitched up into a smirk at his laughter as I crossed my arms and continued to watch them. After a few more moments, I eventually cleared my throat and my smirk fell back to a frown as my face grew back to it's original impassive state.

Eren turned his head once he heard me clear my throat, his teal eyes immediately brightening when he saw my face.

"Levi!" He ran towards me and instantly latched onto my leg in an embrace. I gave out a surprised scoff and brought my hand down to rest on top of his messy hair.

"Lose something?" Erwin turned his gaze to meet mine, the same damn mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Yeah," I hesitantly muttered. "Thanks for finding the brat and entertaining him."

He chuckled. "It was no trouble. He's a good kid."

"Tch," I turned away from his gaze to glance down at Eren who was currently still happily latched onto my leg. I narrowed my eyes and lifted him up into my arms, to which he immediately responded by hugging my neck and straddling my waist like he usually does.

"Oi, brat. Don't ever wander off like that again." I huffed, giving his bottom a light smack. He let out a small yelp of surprise and buried his face against my shoulder from half embarrassment, saying a few muffled words in response.

"Understand?" I sternly repeated.

He removed his face from my shoulder and turned to face me. I nearly smirked at his adorable flushed face.

"Yes, Levi!" He nodded.

"Good," I brushed the tips of my fingers across the nape of his neck, my gaze softening. He hugged me once again and contently nuzzled his face against my neck.

Erwin stood there, watching us with a small smile. "He really loves you."

I hummed in response before hearing the doors behind us open, causing the both of us to look over and see Hanji walk through with a worried look on her face until she saw Eren in my arms and sighed in relief. "You found him."

"Well, now that everything's fine I guess I'll take my leave. It need to take care of some business. But Levi, if you ever need me to watch over the child just say so and I will." Erwin smirked at me. I clicked my tongue in slight amusement as he left the lounge room and headed back towards the elevators.

"Eren!" Hanji reprimanded, shuffling closer towards me and grabbing the boy by the cheeks. I rolled my eyes as he whined and rocked his legs against my side.

"Don't do that to us, sweetie! You scared us! You nearly gave Levi a heart attack!" She chuckled and I gave her a sideways glare.

"Shut it, shit glasses."

Eren lifted his head to loop up at me, curiosity peeking at his teal eyes. "Levi?"

"What?"

"Are we gonna see Captain America again?"

I furrowed my eyebrows in irritation as Hanji laughed at his comment beside us.

"No."

"Aww, but why?" He pressed on.

"Because I said so."

"Levi..!"

"Do you want another smack on your bottom, kid?"

"No!" His head immediately flew to my shoulder and he kept quiet about the subject.

"Maybe sometimes Erwin could watch over him while you're working?" Hanji suggested.

"I don't trust you bastards." I sarcastically remarked, instinctively holding Eren closer to me.

Hanji gushed over my response, pressing her hands against the sides of her face. "Aww, the bonding instinct between you two is already starting to kick in!" She chimed.

I gave her an unamused scoff. Normally I would tell her to shut up, but for once what she was saying right now was the truth.

_I kept on getting closer to this brat as each day passed._


End file.
